JTA — The European Union could be leaning toward banning trade with Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

Foreign ministers debated various tactics to respond to the settlements on Monday at their monthly council meeting in Brussels, against the backdrop of rising violence by settlers and efforts by the government to expand settlements in the territory.

In a press conference following the meeting, the EU’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, said one possibility had stood out.

“The option that got the most support was banning the trade with illegal settlements,” she said. All 27 member states consider settlements in the West Bank to violate international law.

Kallas added: “We tasked the ambassadors to take this work forward, and probably will also have an extraordinary meeting on this.”

She said that the diplomats, at the request of the European Council, examined a range of measures to further limit trade with settlements in the West Bank as well as towns in the Golan Heights.

No decisions have yet been made, and the path forward is uncertain. Some EU member nations favor aggressive action against the settlements, while others are unlikely to back any measures that take aim at Israel. A number are in the middle and have not decided whether they support trade bans.

The level of agreement between European governments needed to enact a partial or full trade ban on settlements remains an open question. Kallas said it was the European Council’s legal opinion that voting on trade issues called for a qualified majority, meaning that 15 out of 27 states would have to vote in favor, representing at least 65 percent of the EU population.

But she also acknowledged that legal experts disagreed about how much backing was needed for a trade ban. “You can always find different lawyers who come up with different ideas,” she said.

Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar accused Kallas of an “obsessive campaign against Israel” in a post on X.

“There was no consensus. There was no qualified majority. In fact, there was no majority at all,” he wrote, adding: “Tricks like this do nothing to advance our shared interests.”

The EU has hotly debated measures against Israel as settlements in the West Bank have expanded and........

© The Times of Israel