Israel Cuts Ties With EU Foreign Policy Chief Over Reported Apartheid Comparison

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar announced on Sunday that Israel is immediately severing contacts with Kaja Kallas, the European Union’s top foreign policy official and vice president of the European Commission. Saar said the move follows a report that Kallas compared Israel’s policies in the territories to apartheid-era South Africa during a closed meeting with diplomats in Mexico.

The alleged comments were reported by Euractiv, an outlet that has not independently verified the claim. According to the report, Kallas made the remarks at a summit in Mexico City on May 20 to 22, speaking privately with Mexican diplomats. The report said she described an emotional visit she made last year to the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg and drew a parallel between South Africa under apartheid and the situation in the territories today.

In his statement, Saar accused Kallas of working for some time with “obsession and disgraceful unfairness” against Israel. He said he thanked European lawmakers who condemned the reported comments, but added that Kallas had not denied, addressed, or responded to them. Saar wrote that he had no choice but to end all contact with her until she retracts what he called a “blood libel” against the Jewish state and the only democracy in the Middle East.

Kallas, the former prime minister of Estonia, has held her EU role for about two and a half years and had generally been seen as a relatively balanced figure on Israel, reflecting the EU’s internal divisions. She has repeatedly brought forward proposals to cut the bloc’s trade ties with Israel, but those ideas were rejected. More recently, the EU has intensified steps against settlements, including unanimous sanctions on groups that promote them and several prominent figures, and it is now considering a trade ban on settlement goods. Neither Kallas’s office nor the European Commission had responded by publication time.