Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said Thursday that he was cutting off all contact with European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas, accusing her of comparing Israel to apartheid-era South Africa.
In a post on social media, Saar said Kallas had reportedly "compared Israel to the racist apartheid regime" during a visit to Mexico and that, as a result, he was severing contact until she retracted the comments.
There was no immediate comment from Kallas' office.
In subsequent posts on X, Saar shared posts from other accounts that mentioned or referenced a June 12 report by European news website Euractiv that cited unnamed officials and diplomats as saying that during her visit to Mexico last month, Kallas had compared Israel's treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza to that of the policies of South Africa under apartheid, a system of legally enforced racial segregation.
The European Union has criticized Israel's expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank, widely viewed as illegal under international law and an obstacle to Israel-Palestinian peace and the establishment of a Palestinian state.
