Israel's Foreign Minister Gideon Saar and EU foreign affairs chief Kaja Kallas have frozen contacts after a push to restrict trade between the bloc and Israeli settlements triggered a war of words.
Not only have the two senior officials gone weeks without speaking, but observers have told The National there is little chance of mending relations before Israeli elections in late October.
The fallout has surprised many who believed Ms Kallas, a former prime minister of Estonia, would repair ties with Israel after the tenure of her predecessor, Josep Borrell, who was persona non grata in the country owing to his sharp criticism of Israeli actions in Gaza. Nearly two years into her mandate, Ms Kallas finds herself pitted against Israel, as well as its staunchest defenders in the EU including Germany and her boss, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
Yet Ms Kallas also has her supporters. "Several member states support Kaja Kallas’s efforts to strengthen the EU’s credibility by ensuring that it acts in line with its own values in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict," a European diplomat told The National.
Fresh start
All had started well between Israel and Ms Kallas, whose appointment was widely thought to offer a fresh start. In February 2025, she co-led the first EU-Israel Association Council – the highest level of political engagement between the sides – during which Mr Saar was warmly welcomed to Brussels.
Discussions at the time focused on the displacement of Gazans by the Israeli military. Talks were described as "candid" by Ms Kallas, while Mr Saar said it was "OK to have differences of opinion".
The high-level talks had often been paused because of tension between the bloc and Israel. A previous council meeting had been scheduled for 2022, with another having meant to be held in 2012.
In March 2025, Ms Kallas travelled to Israel and in July she brokered a deal with Mr Saar by phone to allow 160 more aid lorries a day into Gaza – an achievement touted by her supporters as modest but impactful. The deal was also used as an argument to stave off EU sanctions against Israel after the country's actions in Gaza were found to be a breach of a human rights clause in the association agreement with the bloc.
But the goodwill evaporated last month. Brussels-based news website Euractiv reported on June 18 that Ms Kallas used the word "apartheid" to describe Israel's treatment of Palestinians, during a meeting with Mexican officials in May. Mr Saar issued a swift response on social media. "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," he said in a post on X.
Escalating dispute
Ms Kallas neither confirmed nor denied uttering the word – a term used increasingly by rights groups to describe conditions in Gaza and the occupied West Bank. She said she remained open to dialogue "respectfully and constructively". Her supporters privately describe Mr Saar's attacks as a diversion from the US-Iran deal signed on June 17, which Israel opposed.
The dispute escalated further on Monday when Ms Kallas publicly backed restrictions on trade with Israeli settlements using a qualified majority vote – a mechanism that would sideline the unanimity requirement and remove Germany's ability to veto. Mr Saar accused her of waging an "obsessive campaign against Israel" and using "tricks". Stopping trade with illegal settlements to halt the fuelling of Israel's occupation was outlined as an obligation by the International Court of Justice in a July 2024 advisory opinion.
Ms Kallas is also engaged in an internal battle with Ms von der Leyen over the future of the European External Action Service, the EU's diplomatic service. Media in Brussels have reported that Ms von der Leyen wants to dissolve it, while Ms Kallas has responded by appointing heavyweights including former Dutch defence minister Kajsa Ollongren as the EEAS secretary general.
The gap between Ms Kallas and Ms von der Leyen over Israel is equally stark. The European Commission dragged its feet for months before presenting any proposals, prompting exasperation among some member states. "I know the argument of some of the colleagues," Luxembourg Foreign Minister Xavier Bettel said at Monday's meeting in Brussels, responding to a question from The National. "They say if we decide something today, this will help [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu. For two years, I hear it."
At the EEAS, the commission's reaction to Ms Kallas's row with Mr Saar has been viewed as unsupportive. A long-planned trip by EU Commissioner for the Mediterranean, Dubravka Suica, to Israel on June 22 went ahead despite Mr Saar's criticism. Ms Suica was accompanied by a senior EEAS official, EU special representative for the Middle East peace process, Christophe Bigot, signalling that contacts between the EEAS and Israel persisted despite tensions.
The structural weakness in Ms Kallas's position is fundamental. She speaks in the name of 27 EU member states but cannot act without the backing of a majority of them. With only 11 sharing her view on settlement trade, she remains short of the threshold she needs.
Yet because she is the face of EU foreign policy, she has embodied of the bloc's paralysis – unable to respond coherently to Israel's conduct in Gaza and the West Bank despite the erosion of prospects for a two-state solution the bloc explicitly backs.
'Not a radical'
For now, Ms Kallas is unlikely to see her popularity increase among Europe's more pro-Palestinian states, such as Ireland. Dublin on Wednesday finalised the legislative process to ban the trade of goods with Israeli settlements, becoming the third EU state to do so. Spain and Slovenia took the same step last year, although Slovenia's new government said it would reverse that decision. The formal position of the Irish government is that Israel committed genocide in Gaza – a charge Israel denies.
"If there is any more kind of more favourable view on her, it would be qualified. It would have a big 'it depends' next to it," Conor O'Neill, spokesman for the campaign to pass the Occupied Territories Bill in Ireland, told The National. "There is this deep frustration in Ireland in general, both at public, political and governmental level, at the lack of a coherent and thorough action from the EU."
The bottom line, he said, is that nothing Europe does would satisfy Israel, which rejected what it views as foreign pressure to address issues such as violence against Palestinians in the West Bank.
"Kallas is not a pro-Palestinian radical and what she's doing – if you if you consider international law, you consider the situation on the ground, if you consider public opinion across the European Union – is, relatively speaking, quite modest. And even that has been enough to generate this huge, huge negative reaction from the Israeli government," Mr O'Neill said.
With Israel set for a deeply contentious election in October, there is little leeway for Mr Saar to backtrack and mend ties with Ms Kallas without a public apology, which she has signalled she will not give. That may leave a change of government in Israel as the only realistic path to a reset.
