Slovenia becomes first EU country to impose arms embargo on Israel

The Central European state has besides recognised Palestinian statehood successful 2024.

Slovenia has go the archetypal state successful the European Union to prohibition each weapons commercialized with Israel implicit its warfare connected Gaza.

The announcement comes 2 weeks aft the Central European federation declared Israeli ministers persona non grata, the authorities quality bureau STA reported.

The arms embargo was announced by Prime Minister Robert Golob aft a authorities league connected Thursday.

“Slovenia is the archetypal European state to prohibition the import, export and transit of weapons to and from Israel,” the authorities said successful a statement.

It said it was moving up “independently” due to the fact that the EU was “unable to follow factual measures … owed to interior disagreements and disunity”.

Amid the devastating warfare successful Gaza, wherever “people … are dying due to the fact that humanitarian assistance is systematically denied them”, it was the “duty of each liable authorities to instrumentality action, adjacent if it means taking a measurement up of others”, the connection said.

It added that the authorities had not issued immoderate permits for the export of subject weapons and instrumentality to Israel since October 2023 due to the fact that of the conflict.

Early successful July, Slovenia – besides successful an EU archetypal – banned 2 far-right Israeli ministers from entering the country.

It declared some Israelis “persona non grata”, accusing them of inciting “extreme unit and superior violations of the quality rights of Palestinians” with “their genocidal statements”.

In June 2024, Slovenia’s parliament passed a decree recognising Palestinian statehood, pursuing successful the steps of Ireland, Norway and Spain, successful moves partially spurred by condemnation of Israel’s bombing of Gaza.

Last week, France, the United Kingdom and Canada besides announced they whitethorn recognise a Palestinian state. Israel decried these announcements, saying they were a mode of rewarding Hamas for its October 7, 2023 battle connected Israeli territory.

Israel has been waging a astir 22-month warfare successful Gaza that quality rights groups and United Nations experts person compared to a genocide.

More than 60,000 Palestinians have been killed successful Israel’s subject campaign, with much astatine hazard of dying from hunger arsenic a effect of Israel’s blockade of the territory.

Several countries, including South Africa, person besides brought cases earlier the International Court of Justice alleging that Israel is committing genocide successful Gaza.

The United States, however, has been an unwavering state of Israel passim its warfare successful Gaza, and President Donald Trump has besides warned that designation of Palestinian statehood would service arsenic a “reward” to Hamas.