The European Union will impose sanctions on Jewish settlers in Yehuda and Shomron, EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas announced on Monday.

The new sanctions package was approved unanimously after Hungary — previously the only EU member state blocking measures against Israel — withdrew its opposition after the new prime minister, Peter Magyar, entered his position.

The sanctions are expected to target Jews accused of involvement in violent activity against Palestinians in Yehuda and Shomron and may also apply to organizations connected to those settlers. The European Union has previously imposed sanctions on several individuals and entities linked to settlements.

Kallas clarified in a post on X that, alongside settlers, sanctions would also be imposed on “senior Hamas terrorists.”

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar strongly condemned the EU decision, writing on X: “Israel firmly rejects the decision to impose sanctions on Israeli citizens and organizations.”

“The European Union has chosen, in an arbitrary and political manner, to impose sanctions on Israeli citizens and entities because of their political views and without any basis.

“Equally outrageous is the unacceptable comparison the European Union has chosen to make between Israeli citizens and Hamas terrorists. This is a completely distorted moral equivalence.

“Israel has stood, stands, and will continue to stand for the right of Jews to settle in the heart of our homeland. No other people in the world has such a documented and longstanding right to its land as the Jewish people have to the Land of Israel. This is a moral and historical right that has also been recognized by the law of nations, and no actor can take it away from the Jewish people. The attempt to impose political views through sanctions is unacceptable and will not succeed.”

Yossi Dagan, head of the Shomron Regional Council, sharply attacked the European Union following the announcement.

“There are not two violent sides,” Dagan said. “There is one side that murders babies in their beds and rapes women, and another side that chooses life.”

He argued that Palestinian terrorism against Jews is “hundreds of percent higher” than the isolated incidents of violence by Jews against innocent Palestinians, which he said he opposes completely.

Dagan also criticized the very use of the term “settler violence,” calling it “a form of dehumanization” and “an attempt to erase the faces of half a million people living in Yehuda and Shomron, almost all of whom are law-abiding.”

“The few who commit acts that should not be committed should be dealt with through the accepted legal channels,” he said.

He further accused European leaders of hypocrisy and antisemitism, saying: “As always, antisemitism speaks through the throats of European Union leaders. There is a double standard here. The treatment toward Jews will always be different from the treatment toward Palestinian Authority terrorism.”

Dagan also pointed to what he described as Europe’s silence regarding official Palestinian incitement.

“We have not heard of sanctions against organizations encouraging terrorism within the Palestinian Authority, including Fatah itself, which recently published a notice calling for harm against me,” he said. “I don’t want to imagine what would happen if the Shomron Regional Council published a notice calling for harm against Mahmoud Abbas.”

(YWN Israel Desk—Jerusalem)