EU urged to pursue sanctions over Palestinian reforms as Israeli candidates reject statehood
With major Israeli election candidates ruling out a Palestinian state, European policymakers face growing pressure to abandon ineffective reform demands and implement concrete economic measures to uphold international law.
Every major candidate in the upcoming Israeli election, including Gadi Eisenkot, Yair Golan and Bezalel Smotrich, has committed to blocking the creation of a Palestinian state. This unified political stance leaves the European Union’s continued emphasis on Palestinian institutional reforms increasingly disconnected from reality.
For European policymakers and investors, this dynamic presents a stark challenge to the continent’s commitment to a rules-based international order. Relying on financial aid conditioned on Palestinian reforms has failed to alter the trajectory of settlement expansion or shift the political consensus in Jerusalem. The last meaningful Israeli-Palestinian negotiations took place in 2008, yet the international discourse has rarely adapted to these ground realities.
The debate within Israel’s political spectrum now centers solely on how the occupation is managed, not whether it will end. Whether Benjamin Netanyahu, Gadi Eisenkot or Naftali Bennett leads the next government, the divergence lies only in the tolerated scale of annexation and settler expansion.
The Palestinian Authority, established under the 1994 Oslo Agreement for a five-year interim period, remains in a precarious position. An Israeli opposition victory might preserve the entity strictly for security coordination, effectively maintaining a framework that prevents genuine sovereignty while subsidizing the status quo.
The case for economic leverage
European advocates are now urging a pivot from diplomatic platitudes to tangible economic measures. Proposals include banning settlement products and services from European markets and halting military trade, leveraging the EU’s significant economic weight to raise the cost of perpetuating the occupation.
Past strategies have proven ineffective in changing this calculus. Years of institution-building efforts, including those led by Salam Fayyad, and regional integration through the Abraham Accords have not softened Israeli policies, but rather entrenched the negation of Palestinian statehood.
As Palestinian elections approach in November, the current administration’s acceptance of internationally imposed reforms in exchange for financial resources faces intense scrutiny. European leaders must decide whether to continue funding a conflict-management scheme or align their trade tools with the International Court of Justice’s rulings on the illegality of the occupation. Advocates argue that steps like banning settlement goods should no longer be considered controversial, but rather implemented as a standard response to specific government policies.
