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(54,410 posts) Sat May 31, 2025, 09:20 AM May 2025

Sweden calls for EU sanctions targeting 'individual Israeli ministers'

Swedish Foreign Minister Maria Malmer Stenergard said that her country would work within the EU to push for sanctions against certain Israeli ministers over Israel's treatment of civilian Palestinians in Gaza.

https://www.thelocal.se/20250520/sweden-calls-for-eu-sanctions-targeting-individual-israeli-ministers

https://archive.ph/32M0T

"Since we do not see a clear improvement for the civilians in Gaza, we need to raise the tone further," Malmer Stenergard said in a statement to AFP. "We will therefore now also push for EU sanctions against individual Israeli ministers," she added.

Stenergard said the sanctions should target "ministers who are pushing an illegal settlement policy and actively opposing a future two-state solution", with EU discussions determining which officials would be targeted. But she insisted that Sweden was a "friend of Israel". Her comments came as she met with EU counterparts in Brussels on Tuesday.

The Israeli army stepped up its offensive at the weekend, vowing to defeat the Hamas militant group that runs Gaza after its October 7th, 2023 attack on Israel triggered the war. Aid trickled into the Gaza Strip on Monday for the first time in more than two months, following widespread condemnation of Israel's total blockade that has caused severe shortages of food and medicine.

On Tuesday, a UN spokesman said it had received permission to send another "around 100" trucks of aid into Gaza. "In all of our contacts with the Israeli government, we have long demanded increased humanitarian access and have been very critical of the fact that they have not secured it," Stenergard said.

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