Overview
- More than 500 former prime ministers, diplomats and senior EU officials published a public statement on Monday calling for EU-level measures against Israel’s planned E1 settlement project in the occupied West Bank.
- The letter says Israel will soon award the first tranche of E1 contracts and that building the scheme would physically split the West Bank and undermine the prospect of a viable Palestinian state.
- Signatories singled out Germany and Italy for blocking tougher EU action and said those governments have become de facto complicit in preventing a unified bloc response.
- The group asked the European Commission to table legislation to sanction banks and service providers linked to E1 and to stop all EU trade with settlements, proposals that Brussels has not yet advanced.
- Some EU states have moved unilaterally to restrict settlement trade with different rules in place, the EU foreign ministers meet on October 12 as the next formal decision point, and companies face growing legal and reputational risks if they bid for E1 work.