Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said on Thursday that he was suspending all contact with the European External Action Service chief Kaja Kallas over reports that she compared Israel to the former apartheid regime in South Africa.
Relations between Israel and the European Union have been increasingly strained since the outbreak of the Gaza war in October 2023, as well as over violence by Israeli settlers against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.
In a post on X, Saar accused Kallas of “acting obsessively and with blatant unfairness” towards Israel.
“Recently, it was published that during her visit to Mexico, she compared Israel to the racist apartheid regime that existed in South Africa,” Saar wrote.