Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar is not changing his decision to cut contacts with European Union top diplomat Kaja Kallas over her reported apartheid comments, after Kallas appeared to try to reduce the tension.
Saar is angered over reports that Kallas compared Israel’s treatment of Palestinians to the state-institutionalized system of racial segregation in South Africa, known as apartheid, that was in place from 1948 until 1994.
“I have no choice but to sever all contact with Ms Kallas until she retracts the blood libel she directed at the world’s only Jewish state, which is also the only democracy in the Middle East,” Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said on Thursday on X.
Digital media outlet Euractiv reported last week that Kallas made the remarks in May during a visit to Mexico.
Following Saar’s initial post, Kallas wrote: “I value our dialogue and engagement, and I’m open to continue in that spirit, respectfully and constructively.”
“To bring peace to the Middle East, the Two-State Solution remains the only viable path. The EU has condemned the illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank that make it increasingly difficult to get to that goal. That is the EU position,” she wrote.
But less than an hour later, Saar said he was not changing his mind, noting that Kallas, in her X post, did not deny or condemn the apartheid comment attributed to her.
“That speaks for itself,” he wrote, adding that he believes that Kallas’ reported apartheid comments do not reflect the EU’s position.
“The matter is simple: if you did indeed make these vile and defamatory statements, stand behind them. If you did not make them, deny it. Until this matter is cleared up, my decision will remain unchanged,” Saar wrote.
Germany’s Merz rejects apartheid comparison
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz rejected the reported comparison.
“I explicitly disagree with this choice of words, and we will have to discuss this further,” said Merz, as he arrived at an EU summit in Brussels.
Merz said that EU leaders will debate the issue.
Amnesty International recently accused Israel’s government in a report of making the formal annexation of the occupied West Bank a declared policy goal. The organization also spoke of an Israeli system of apartheid.
Israel took over the West Bank and East Jerusalem among other territories in 1967, where more than 700,000 settlers now live among around 3 million Palestinians. The Palestinians claim these territories for their own state with East Jerusalem as its capital.
The United Nations views the settlements as an obstacle to a two-state solution in which Israel and an independent Palestinian state would exist peacefully side by side. Israel’s government rejects this, seeing it as a threat to the country’s existence.
The apartheid system in place for nearly 50 years in South Africa secured the dominance of the white minority.
Under international law, apartheid is considered a crime against humanity and describes the systematic oppression and dominance of one ethnic group over another.
Today, the term is also used outside the South African context and remains the subject of ongoing political and legal controversy.