April 16th 2026
Dear President von der Leyen,
Dear High Representative / Vice-President Kallas,
Dear Foreign Ministers of the EU member states,
We, the undersigned humanitarian and human rights organisations and trade unions, write to you as Israeli authorities escalate their brutal repression and illegal annexation policies in Palestine, and violations of international humanitarian law (IHL) in Palestine and Lebanon to urge you to adopt the long-overdue measures proposed by President von der Leyen in September 2025, in particular the suspension of the EU-Israel Association Agreement, along with any additional steps necessary to comply with international law, including banning trade with illegal Israeli settlements and suspending all transfers and transit of arms to Israel.
Already in June 2025, the EU had found Israel in breach of Article 2 of the EU-Israel Association Agreement, which identifies respect of human rights and democratic principles as “essential elements” of the treaty. Ongoing actions by Israeli authorities in Israel, throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) and in Lebanon further compound that breach, and are causing immense suffering to millions throughout the region.
Last month, the Israeli Knesset passed a discriminatory death penalty law that significantly expands the scope and application of the death penalty, in effect targeting Palestinians only. The law is not only an egregious violation of the rights to life and fair trial of Palestinians, but also adds to the growing body of discriminatory legislation and policies implemented by Israeli authorities against Palestinians, which the International Court of Justice has found to violate Article 3 CERD, which prohibits racial segregation and apartheid, in its Advisory Opinion of July 2024. Numerous UN bodies and experts, Palestinian, Israeli and international human rights organisations, and renowned legal scholars, have also documented how these policies and legislation amount to the system and crime against humanity of apartheid.
In the occupied West Bank, Israel is accelerating its illegal annexation policies and practices and is intensifying repression and serious abuses against Palestinians. Since the start of the war with Iran and Lebanon, the situation has severely worsened. Since 28 February, Israeli authorities have imposed strict movement restrictions across the OPT. In addition to previously existing check-points, dozens of new road gates have been installed by Israeli authorities in the West Bank since October 2023, most of which are now closed, severely impacting Palestinians’ access to their lands, workplaces, schools, health and emergency services. Moreover, Israeli forces and state-backed settlers have increased attacks against Palestinians, with over 200 attacks in March alone, including reports of sexual abuse. According to UN OCHA this year Israeli forces and settlers have killed 34 Palestinians, including seven children and injured 771, including 97 children. Attacks are increasingly directed towards larger Palestinian villages in area B, spreading through the West Bank. Since October 2023, state-backed settler violence has led to the displacement of 38 entire Palestinian communities. Less than three months into 2026, 1700 Palestinians have been displaced, already surpassing the total for the whole of 2025. For violent settlers, impunity remains the norm: according to Israeli NGOs, only 3% of cases lead to a full or partial conviction. In contrast, for Palestinians the conviction rate in military courts is 99%.
The increasingly lethal state-backed settler violence goes hand in hand with the acceleration of illegal settlement expansion and annexation policies through a set of measures recently adopted by Israel to displace and dispossess Palestinians in the West Bank. In August 2025, the Israeli Higher Planning Council approved the E1 plan, meant to cut through the occupied Palestinian land, with Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for atrocity crimes, saying out loud that the E1’s goal is to ensure “that there will be no Palestinian state”. In illegally annexed East Jerusalem, Israeli authorities forcibly evicted 15 Palestinian families, including 29 children, from their homes in Batn al-Hawa in Silwan last month. At least 200 other families in the neighbourhood face the risk of forced eviction to enable the unlawful takeover of their homes by settler organisations.
Meanwhile, more than 9560 Palestinians are held in Israeli detention, half of whom are held without charges or trial, either under administrative detention or under the Unlawful Combatants’ Law. Israel currently detains 351 Palestinian children, with more than half held in administrative detention without charge or trial. UN experts, Palestinian and Israeli NGOs have documented systematic torture and inhuman and degrading treatment against Palestinian prisoners, and Israeli authorities continue to deny the ICRC access to all places of detention.
In the occupied Gaza Strip, the Israel-made humanitarian catastrophe persists. Israel remains in breach of three binding orders of the International Court of Justice in the case brought by South Africa for alleged violation of the UN Genocide Convention, including to ensure unimpeded access for humanitarian assistance, and to preserve evidence. The UN Commission of Inquiry, alongside numerous human rights organisations and legal scholars, has found that Israeli authorities have committed and are continuing to commit genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
Since the start of a so-called ceasefire in October 2025, at least 736 Palestinians have been killed. Airstrikes, shelling and gunfire continues on both sides of the so-called “Yellow Line”, a temporary military demarcation that now risks evolving into an enduring territorial division. In the meantime, newly introduced registration requirements, which violate established humanitarian principles and data protection laws, allowed the Israeli authorities to further restrict the operational space for dozens of international humanitarian organisations.
Israeli policies throughout the OPT run counter the obligations laid out in the July 2024 advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which found Israel’s occupation to be unlawful and marred by serious abuses, including Israel’s breach of Article 3 of the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, which prohibits racial segregation and apartheid. The Court clarified Israel should end its occupation, dismantle its settlements, allow Palestinians to return to their homes and provide them with reparations for the harm suffered.
Several experts have warned about the possible “Gazafication” of the conflict in Lebanon, where Israeli forces have displaced over 1.2 million people, around one fifth of the country’s population, in their offensive against Hezbollah, following overly broad evacuation orders which do not constitute effective guarantees of protection. The Israeli military has targeted healthcare facilities and workers, journalists, and civilian infrastructure, including bridges, which will severely impact the ability to deliver food for the people who cannot or choose not to leave their homes, and who should continue to be protected under IHL. Israeli authorities indicated the area would become a “buffer zone” in which all Lebanese homes in border villages will be destroyed and Israel will maintain control over the south of Lebanon up to the Litani river, as stated by Minister Katz.
These developments come on the heels of decades of toothless EU statements of concern and calls for a “two-state solution” that have been largely ignored by Israeli authorities, to no consequences. We welcome commitments by five member states (Spain, Ireland, Slovenia, Belgium, and The Netherlands) to ban imports of goods from illegal Israeli settlements, as required by international law and the ICJ’s advisory opinion of July 2024, and commend Spain for having already banned the imports of goods and advertisements of both goods and services from illegal Israeli settlements as of September 2025. We urge the EU to do the same, in compliance with Articles 3(5) and 21(1) TEU, and in line with its longstanding, unanimous condemnation of Israeli settlement policies as illegal and an “obstacle to a two-state solution” that the EU claims to pursue.
To date, no qualified majority has been reached in the Council to suspend the trade provisions of the EU-Israel Association Agreement, despite repeated calls from member states, Members of the European Parliament, civil society and the European public. This failure to act risks rendering the Association Agreement’s human rights clause meaningless in practice, further tarnishes the EU’s credibility and emboldens the sense of impunity fueling Israel’s growing abuses. We call on member states to support the suspension of the agreement, and urge the Council to reflect on the reputational, legal and most of all human consequences of continued inaction in the face of mounting evidence of crimes under international law committed by Israel both in Palestine and Lebanon.
The European Union and its member states should immediately suspend all transfers and transit of arms, munitions, equipment, technology, parts and dual-use goods to Israel This obligation is not discretionary but arises under both EU and international law. Article 6 and 7 of the Arms Trade Treaty and the EU Common Position on Arms Exports requires states not to transfer arms to a recipient where a clear risk exists they might be used in serious violation of IHL, as is the case for Israel. In addition, Common Article 1 of the 1949 Geneva Conventions requires that States respect and ensure respect for IHL. While several member states have already suspended arms exports, we urge all remaining states to do so without delay. In addition, the EU should take coordinated action at the institutional level to prevent the transit of arms, components, and dual-use goods through its territory to Israel, including by closing existing regulatory and enforcement gaps.
The patterns documented in this letter are the predictable consequence of decades of impunity: a failure by the international community to hold Israeli authorities accountable, and a willingness to allow political considerations to override legal obligations. What remains absent is the political will to act. The measures we urge in this letter, suspending arms transfers, banning trade with illegal Israeli settlements, and suspending the Association Agreement, are not mere political choices. They are legal obligations. The people of Palestine and Lebanon deserve action and accountability, not concerns and condolences. The time to act is long overdue.
Signatories:
International:
ACT Alliance EU
ActionAid International
Amnesty International
Avaaz
Bystanders No More
Caritas Europa
CIDSE- International family of Catholic Social Justice Organisations
Committee to Protect Journalists
Ekō
EuroMed Rights
International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH)
Global Witness
Human Rights Watch
International Media Support
International Peace Bureau
International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims
Medico International
Oxfam
Pax Christi International
SJES / Society of Jesus
SOLIDAR
United Against Inhumanity
World BEYOND War
World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT)
Member state-based:
11.11.11, Belgium
Act Church of Sweden
Action des Chrétiens pour l’Abolition de la Torture, Luxembourg
ActionAid Denmark
ACV-CSC Belgium
Adala for All, France
Afri (Action from Ireland), Ireland
Ambasada Rog, Slovenia
Association France Palestine Solidarité, France
Avocats Sans Frontières, Belgium
Belgian Academics and Artists for Palestine (BA4P/BACBI), Belgium
Broederlijk Delen, Belgium
Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies
Centre for Global Education, Ireland
Centro Pace ecologia e diritti umani, Italy
CGIL, Italy
Christian Aid Ireland
CISS, Cooperazione Internazionale Sud Sud, Italy
CNCD, Belgium
Comhlámh, Ireland
Comhlámh Justice for Palestine, Ireland
Comité pour une Paix Juste au Proche-Orient, Luxembourg
Committee to Protect Journalists
COPE – Cooperazione Paesi Emergenti, Italy
COSPE, Italy
Danes je nov dan, Inštitut za druga vprašanja, Slovenia
Diakonia, Sweden
Dignity- Danish Institute against Torture, Denmark
docP – BDS Netherlands
EDUCO, Spain
Een Ander Joods Geluid, The Netherlands
Entraide et Fraternité, Belgium
European Coordination of Committees and Associations for Palestine, Belgium
European Trade Union Network for Justice in Palestine, Belgium
FGTB-ABVV, Belgium
Friends of the Earth, Spain
Gaza Group GCDG, Belgium
Glosa, Slovenia
International Committee Against House Demolitions – Germany
Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Ireland
Jewish Call for Peace, Luxembourg
Jews For Palestine Ireland
Junts Associació Catalana de Jueus i Palestins, Spain
Kairos Ireland
Law4Palestine, UK and Sweden
Ligue des droits humains (LDH), France
Nederlands Palestina Komitee, The Netherlands
Olof Palme International Center, Sweden
Palestina Solidariteit vzw, Belgium
PAX, the Netherlands
Peace Institute, Slovenia
Platform of French NGOs for Palestine, France
Portuguese Platform of Development NGOs, Portugal
Pro Peace, Germany
Reka Si, Slovenia
Sadaka-The Ireland Palestine Alliance, Ireland
Slovene Philanthropy, Slovenia
Solsoc, Belgium
Swedish Peace and Arbitration Society, Sweden
SweFOR, Sweden
The Rights Forum, The Netherlands
The Palestine Solidarity Association in Sweden
Trócaire, Ireland
Uniting Church in Sweden
Viva Salud, Belgium
Weltfriedensdienst e.V., Germany
Women for Peace, Finland
Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom WILPF Finland
Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom WILPF Italy
Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom WILPF Spain
