EU details €6m West Bank monitoring plan, prepares to blacklist more settlers
· EUobserverPalestinian farmer in Muarajat East, in the Israeli occupied West Bank (Source: EU Commission )
EU details €6m West Bank monitoring plan, prepares to blacklist more settlers
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By Andrew Rettman,
Brussels
,
The EU is to spend €6m on “volunteer” monitors of settler violence in the West Bank, as foreign ministers prepare to blacklist the most extreme ones.
The money is to be spent on “reinforcing volunteer first-responder teams and improving operational readiness of the Palestinian Civil Defence”, an EU Commission spokesperson told EUobserver on Thursday (7 May).
It will also support “civil society organisations to document violations, preserve evidence” so that more violent settlers face trial.
“It aims to enhance emergency response capacity and legal accountability in response to the sharp rise in violent settler attacks,” the EU spokesperson also said.
The first payments are foreseen by the end of July and will go to “mostly affected communities … especially in Ramallah, Hebron, and Nablus governorates”, who faced “deaths, injuries, property destruction, and forced displacement”.
The EU-financed “volunteer first-responders” are meant to deter what Palestinian Authority prime minister Mohammad Mustafa called “settler terrorism,” commenting on the EU scheme to the AFP news agency.
“Civil society groups supported by the EU are expected to provide a protective presence in affected areas, while Palestinian communities facing attacks from settlers would also receive protective equipment such as fences,” an EU source also told AFP.
The EU Commission neither confirmed nor denied this.
Israel’s EU mission in Brussels and its foreign ministry in Jerusalem were approached for comment.
Israel did let Irish liberal MEP Barry Andrews tour the West Bank this week.
But it does not usually like an international spotlight on its actions and has still not let journalists into Gaza after two and half years, despite repeated EU appeals.
“I highly doubt the IDF [Israeli Defence Forces] would play ball with that [the EU’s West Bank monitors]”, said David Issacharoff, a journalist at Israeli daily Haaretz.
“It might lead to escalations between Jerusalem and Brussels when IDF soldiers may be documented behaving in inappropriate ways when handling their [the EU’s] staff or representatives on the ground,” he said.
Israeli settlers, often backed by the IDF, have killed 42 Palestinians, including 10 children and two women, in 2026 up to 27 April, according to the UN humanitarian office.
Just two percent of the thousands of documented cases of violent attacks since October 2023 led to Israeli indictments, according to Israeli civil rights group Yesh Din.
“The International Court of Justice was clear: Israel’s very presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory is illegal. If the EU took action [sanctions] to implement that ruling, there would be no [extremist] settlers to begin with – and to protect Palestinians from,” said Claudio Francavilla, from the Human Rights Watch Group.
“Adding insult to injury, Europe continues to trade with Israel’s illegal settlements, bankrolling the very abuses it condemns every other day”, he added.
Settler blacklist to grow?
For their part, EU foreign ministers will discuss anti-settler sanctions when they meet in Brussels on 11 May.
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Author Bio
Andrew Rettman is EUobserver’s foreign editor, writing about foreign and security issues since 2005. He is Polish, but grew up in the UK, and lives in Brussels. He has also written for The Guardian, The Times of London, and Intelligence Online.