EU foreign ministers fail to break deadlock over Israel and Ukraine

Wicklow, Ireland – “We have reached an impasse,” said Ireland’s Foreign Minister Helen McEntee at a gathering of European Union officials on Tuesday, summing up the bloc’s increasingly fractured position on trade sanctions on Israel.Ireland, which currently holds the European Council’s presidency, and Spain pushed for EU-wide trade curbs on goods produced in illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank at the September 1-2 meeting in Wicklow amid escalating settler violence against Palestinians.France pressed for a stronger European response to Israeli rhetoric against Palestinians. “Condemnations from Israeli officials have been a good start, but they are not enough,” French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot told reporters, referring to Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir’s call for mass displacement in the Gaza Strip.But several EU nations, including Germany and Hungary, opposed the move during the two-day informal gathering.The Gymnich meeting, as the gathering is called, opened on Tuesday with renewed efforts by Dublin to revive discussions on sanctions against Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank – a proposal that has largely stalled in recent mo...