EU Human Rights Envoy: Israel is failing to stop settler attacks

Published: 13 June 2023

Last updated: 5 March 2024

Israel is not doing enough to investigate Palestinian civilian casualties, Envoy warns.

The European Union’s Special Representative for Human Rights says Israel needs to do more to investigate and stop attacks by Israeli settlers in the occupied territories against Palestinian civilians.

At the end of his three-day visit to Israel and the West Bank, Eamon Gilmore said that he had urged Israeli officials to act on this issue but he did not sound optimistic about the future.

“I raised it with Israeli officials, and I’m waiting for more information,” Gilmore said. “There is a gap between the number of incidents and the number of investigations that take place.”

Gilmore has been the EU’s human rights czar since 2019, and his four-year term has recently been extended until February 2024. Israeli officials view him as a tough critic from his days as Irish foreign minister and in his EU position.

“There was a large number of civilian deaths in 2022, and the same trajectory is continuing so far in 2023,” he said. During his visit, the case of Mohammed Tamimi, a Palestinian toddler who was shot to death by the military in the village of Nabi Saleh, made local and international headlines. Gilmore said he is worried about the “clear trend” seen in the data in recent months of a growing number of civilian casualties and stressed again the need for investigations and “accountability” in every such case.

Israelis often complain that human rights watchdogs target Israel for criticism and ignore human rights violations on the Palestinian side. Gilmore told Haaretz this was false, and noted that in his meetings with Palestinian officials, he raised issues such as women’s rights in Palestinian society, protecting freedom of speech, allowing the operation of civil society groups that criticise the government, “and ultimately the need to hold elections” as well.