"When Israel and the U.S. do Europe's dirty work, fighting for civilization against jihadist fanatics in Iran and elsewhere, the EU shows its moral bankruptcy by presenting a false symmetry between Israeli citizens and Hamas terrorists", Netanyahu wrote on X.
EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas announced earlier Monday that member states had unanimously agreed to impose new sanctions on Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank for violence against Palestinians. In the same statement, she said foreign ministers had also adopted fresh sanctions against senior Hamas figures. "Extremism and violence have consequences", Kallas wrote on X.
Netanyahu rejected the measures as unacceptable, saying punishing Jews for living in Judea and Samaria — Israel's term for the West Bank — was impermissible, and that Israel would always protect their right to live "in the heart of our ancestral homeland".
Israel seized the West Bank during the 1967 Six-Day War. It is home to around three million Palestinians and half a million Jewish settlers. Most countries consider Israeli settlements there illegal under international law. The UN recorded more than 1,800 settler attacks causing casualties or property damage across roughly 280 Palestinian communities in the West Bank in 2025 alone.
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Source: PAP