Israel’s foreign minister, Gideon Saar, announced on Thursday that he is severing “all contact” with Kaja Kallas, the European Union’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs, following a report that she compared Israel’s treatment of Palestinians to apartheid-era South Africa. The alleged remarks were made during a closed-door meeting with Mexican officials in May and surfaced last week in the Brussels-based news outlet Euractiv, which cited unnamed diplomats present in the room. Saar declared that he would have no dealings with Kallas until she retracts what he described as a “blood libel” against the world’s only Jewish state.

Viewed from Jerusalem, the move is the sharpest diplomatic rupture between Israel and the EU’s foreign policy chief since the Gaza war erupted in October 2023. Saar accused Kallas of “acting obsessively and with blatant unfairness” towards Israel, and his office noted that she had issued no denial or clarification in the days after the report appeared. The phrase “blood libel” deliberately invokes medieval antisemitic conspiracy theories, signalling that the Israeli government regards the comparison not merely as a policy disagreement but as an existential slander. The episode has further inflamed a relationship already strained by European criticism of Israeli settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank and the civilian toll of the military campaign in Gaza.

In Brussels, the response was calibrated to avoid escalation while holding firm on core positions. Kallas replied directly to Saar on social media, addressing him as “Dear Gideon” and stressing that dialogue is the foundation of diplomacy, especially when disagreements arise. She did not confirm or deny the apartheid remark, but reiterated the EU’s long-standing condemnation of illegal Israeli settlements and its view that a two-state solution remains the only viable path to peace. EU Ambassador to Israel Michael Mann, in an interview with the Jerusalem Post, clarified that the bloc does not view Israel as an apartheid state and cautioned against drawing conclusions from an unofficial quote. European diplomats privately note that Kallas, a former Estonian prime minister, has taken a more forthrightly critical line on Israel than some of her predecessors, yet the official EU position has not shifted.

Analysts in London and other European capitals see the standoff as a stress test for EU-Israel relations at a moment when the bloc is seeking to maintain a constructive role in the Middle East. By cutting contact, Saar has effectively frozen a key channel of communication at a time when European governments are divided over sanctions on extremist settlers and the recognition of a Palestinian state. The affair also highlights the fragility of diplomatic discourse when off-the-record remarks leak into the public domain. Unless Kallas offers an explicit retraction—which her initial response carefully avoided—the freeze could persist, leaving the EU’s most senior diplomat unable to engage directly with Israel’s foreign ministry on issues ranging from humanitarian access in Gaza to regional de-escalation.