Czech Foreign Minister Petr Macinka told Bloomberg on Thursday that his country would block European Union efforts to impose sanctions on National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir over his conduct toward flotilla activists who tried to reach the Gaza Strip.
"Don't even try, or we will block it," Macinka said he had told his EU partners, should such a proposal be brought up for discussion before Israel's upcoming October election.
Macinka did not mince words about Ben-Gvir, describing him as "a terrible and unbearable person" whose conduct "crosses every line." Even so, he said sanctions on Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich would only turn them into heroes in the eyes of their voters and into "victims" of some anti-Zionist Western conspiracy. "Paradoxically, we would actually be helping them," he said.
Macinka also called the flotilla activists "provocateurs" and "very radical." Last month, the European Union already imposed sanctions on "violent settlers" in Judea and Samaria. It was the first time the 27 member states had managed to reach unanimous agreement on punitive measures against Israel since the peak of the Gaza crisis.
Ben-Gvir and Smotrich were supposed to have been included on the list at the time, but their inclusion was ultimately postponed in order to secure broader support.
EU diplomats have already begun working on sanctions against Ben-Gvir, although disagreements among the member states continue. Czech opposition is expected to thwart those efforts, leaving individual countries to act independently, as France and Ireland have already done.
France, led by President Emmanuel Macron, has since last summer spearheaded a campaign of unilateral measures against Israel, including recognition of a Palestinian state at the UN General Assembly in September.
Several European Union countries are promoting sanctions against Ben-Gvir and Smotrich, including Italy, France, Ireland and Spain, but such measures require consensus among all 27 member states. Italy and Spain submitted the formal request to impose sanctions on Ben-Gvir, with France, Ireland, the Netherlands and Poland backing the move.
In the absence of overall agreement, several countries have already acted on their own and barred the ministers from entering their territory, including France, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium and Slovenia.
Another initiative, led by France and Sweden, seeks to impose a boycott on imports from Judea and Samaria. The two countries appealed to the European Commission in April and demanded that it examine the imposition of tariffs and import restrictions on goods from the settlements, even hinting that a full boycott of all goods from the area could be justified.
