More than 500 former European leaders demand EU sanction Israel

Na declaration entitled ‘Action for Action’, signatories criticise the European Union for not taking action against the expansion of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, including Project E1, which, they point out, will prevent the solution of two states, ‘the only possible outcome to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict’.

Project E1 (East 1) is an Israeli settlement expansion plan in the occupied West Bank that provides for the construction of thousands of 3,400 houses in an area of 12 square kilometres between East Jerusalem and the settlement of Ma’ale Adumim, a strategic zone of the region.

The E1 divides the West Bank into two parts (north and south), cutting the Palestinian territorial continuity and drastically hindering the circulation between cities such as Bethlehem and Ramallah.

The first construction contracts will be awarded in a few weeks.

“ Despite the drastic implications of this new annexation of territory, the EU has not taken any steps to prevent project E1 nor, more generally, has fulfilled its obligations under the EU treaties and its duty to act against violations of international law,” said the former officials.

While they praise the measures taken by some Member States against illegal settlements, they stress that some, including Germany and Italy, “continue to systematically block the adoption of any EU measures and thus become complicit in weakening both the EU values and the two-state solution.”.

Faced with the scenario, signatories – including former Minister of Foreign Affairs and Defence João Cravinho, former President of Parliament Eduardo Ferro Rodrigues, former Secretary of State for European Affairs Margarida Marques, Fernando Neves and Francisco Seixas da Costa, and Ambassador José Manuel Pinto Teixeira – ask Brussels to show leadership and move forward with measures.

“ We call on the EU to implement the long overdue proposals to suspend the trade provisions of the EU-Israel Association Agreement”, they say.

In addition, the European Commission must “immediately submit legislative proposals to sanction all financial institutions and other service providers that contribute to the implementation of E1 and other illegal settlements” and must “stop all EU trade with illegal settlements”, they demand.

The more than 500 former European ministers and ambassadors argue that these decisions should be taken at the next meeting of EU Foreign Ministers scheduled for next Monday 12 October.

On that day, the 27 meet “after another year of violence and ethnic cleansing perpetrated by the Israeli Government against the Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank”.

The situation is, they stress, “deeply disturbing”.

In Gaza, “another 1,400 Palestinians, including 200 children, were killed in the year following the ‘break-fire’ of 11 October 2025′′′ and, since the beginning of the war, in October 2023, the number of deaths by the Israeli Defence Forces has already risen to 74,000, including more than 21,600 children,” they remember.

The humanitarian situation, the group adds in the statement, continues to be dramatic for the 2 million people piled up in less than 40% of Gaza’s territorial area, “with insufficient supply of all goods essential to human life due to the draconian restrictions imposed by the Israeli Government”.

Telaviv continues to ignore “the binding measures imposed on him in 2024 by the preliminary conclusions of the International Court of Justice in South Africa’s genocide process”, they also point out.

Specifically in the West Bank, in addition to the E1 project, there is an “epidemic of violence by the settlers, supported by the State” and increased land ownership and the construction of settlements “at an unprecedented pace”.

Recalling that the President of the European Commission said, in her speech of September 2025 to the European Parliament, that European citizens wonder how much worse the situation will have to be for a united response, the signatories conclude that “the time has come for the EU and the Member States to act”.