Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar announced on September 4 that he is suspending all communication with European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas, following reports that she compared Israel's treatment of Palestinians to the apartheid system that once existed in South Africa.
The diplomatic crisis erupted after European news outlet Euractiv reported last week that Kallas made the remarks during high-level negotiations with Mexican officials in May. According to anonymous diplomats and officials, Kallas equated Israeli policies in Gaza and the occupied West Bank with the apartheid regime that ruled South Africa until the early 1990s.
In a post on X on September 4, Saar accused Kallas of exhibiting long-standing bias against Israel. “Kaja Kallas has long acted in an obsessive and clearly unfair manner toward the State of Israel,” he wrote. Saar said Kallas had neither denied nor clarified the reported comments, leaving him “with no choice but to cut off all contact” until she retracts what he described as a “blood libel” against Israel.
Kallas responded publicly, emphasizing the EU's continued commitment to ties with Israel, but did not directly address the apartheid accusation. “Dear Gideon, as you know, the EU and Israel share many bonds,” she wrote on X. “Dialogue is the foundation of diplomacy, especially when there are differences.” Kallas reiterated the EU's support for a two-state solution and its opposition to Israel’s illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank, which Brussels considers a violation of international law.
Within an hour, Saar stated that Kallas’s comments did not change his decision to sever ties, noting that in her X post, she neither denied nor condemned the apartheid remarks attributed to her.
The controversy comes amid heightened international scrutiny of Israel's treatment of Palestinians, as airstrikes continue in Gaza and frequent raids occur in occupied West Bank villages. In January, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) concluded that Israel has been “violating international law” requiring states to prevent and eliminate racial discrimination and apartheid. “Israeli authorities treat Israeli settlers and Palestinians living in the West Bank under two separate systems of laws and policies, leading to unequal treatment in a range of critical issues, including movement and access to resources such as land and water,” the OHCHR report stated. “Palestinians continue to face large-scale land confiscation and deprivation of access to resources.”
The findings echoed those of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in a landmark advisory opinion from July 2024, in which the ICJ declared Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory illegal and raised concerns about racial discrimination and apartheid in the occupied Palestinian territories.
