Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar told reporters Monday the deal was holding and batted away questions about reported killings of Palestinians at Gaza aid stations, blaming the Hamas militant group for, he said, diverting aid.
Sa’ar also predicted that EU foreign ministers would stop short of any measures to penalize Israel at their meeting Tuesday.
Indeed, Kallas is due to present a list of options to downgrade EU-Israel relations, ranging from a suspension of trade relations to fewer student exchanges. Those options follow an EU review of its trading agreement with Israel which found the state was not living up to its humanitarian obligations in Gaza.
Even so, several EU diplomats told POLITICO that countries were unlikely to make a serious push to trigger any of those options.
However, ministers vowed to press for details on last week’s EU-Israel deal as well as ways to verify that it’s being fully implemented.
“I want to know better what this agreement is about but also the mechanism of follow-up that the European Union will have to check the implementation,” said Spanish Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares.
