The UN rights office has previously found that Israel is violating international laws that prohibit apartheid.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar says he is suspending contact with the European Union’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, after reports that she compared Israel’s treatment of Palestinians to South Africa’s former apartheid system.

The diplomatic row erupted after European news outlet Euractiv reported last week that Kallas made the remarks during high-level talks with Mexican officials in May.

Citing unnamed diplomats and officials, the outlet said Kallas compared Israel’s policies in Gaza and the occupied West Bank to the racial segregation regime that ruled South Africa until the early 1990s.

In a post on X on Thursday, Saar accused Kallas of displaying a longstanding bias against Israel.

“Kaja Kallas has for some time now been acting obsessively and with blatant unfairness toward the State of Israel,” he wrote. Saar said Kallas had neither denied nor clarified the reported comments, leaving him with “no choice but to sever all contact” until she retracts what he described as a “blood libel” against Israel.

Kallas responded publicly, stressing that the EU remained committed to maintaining relations with Israel, but she did not directly address the apartheid allegation.

“Dear Gideon, as you know, the EU and Israel have a lot that binds us,” she wrote on X. “Dialogue is the foundation of diplomacy, especially when differences arise.”

Kallas reiterated the EU’s support for a two-state solution and its opposition to illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, which Brussels considers illegal under international law.

Less than an hour later, Saar said Kallas’s comments did not change his mind about cutting ties, noting that in her X post, she did not deny or condemn the apartheid comment attributed to her.

The dispute comes amid growing international scrutiny of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians amid its continued strikes in Gaza and frequent attacks on villages in the occupied West Bank.

In January, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights concluded that Israel was “violating international law” requiring states to prohibit and eradicate racial segregation and apartheid.

“Israeli authorities treat Israeli settlers and Palestinians residing in the West Bank under two distinct bodies of law and policies, resulting in unequal treatment on a range of critical issues, including movement and access to resources such as land and water, the report finds,” it said.

“Palestinians continue to be subjected to large-scale confiscation of land and deprivation of access to resources,” it added.

The findings echoed conclusions reached by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in its landmark July 2024 advisory opinion, which found Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory unlawful and cited concerns over racial segregation and apartheid in the occupied Palestinian territory.