Human Rights Watch called on the European Union to condemn the Israeli apartheid regime and crimes against humanity during the EU-Israel Association Council meeting scheduled to be held on October 3, 2022.

“European officials should know they’ll be shaking hands with representatives of a government committing crimes against humanity and that has outlawed prominent civil society groups challenging these abuses,” said Omar Shakir, Israel and Palestine director at Human Rights Watch.

In addition, Claudio Francavilla, an EU advocate at Human Rights Watch said, “The decades-long European failure to take action in the face of grave human rights abuses has emboldened Israeli authorities to brazenly escalate their repression of Palestinians,”

Several Palestinian, European, and international nongovernmental organizations, as well as 47 Members of the European Parliament, have raised serious concerns around the Association Council meeting which aimed at “facilitating political dialogue and strengthening cooperation with Israel.”

This meeting comes after a series of Israeli human violations and crimes committed by the Israeli occupation against Palestinians in 2022, the last of which was the killing of 7-year-old Palestinian child Rayan Sulieman during an Israeli raid in occupied Bethlehem.

Earlier in August, 49 Palestinians in Gaza, including 17 children, were killed when Israel launched a 3-day-aggression against the besieged Strip.

So far in 2022, the Israeli occupation has killed about 162 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, Gaza Strip, and Jerusalem, according to a Palestinian report.