EU ministers largely back Israeli settlement trade ban, Kallas says

EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas says foreign ministers largely favoured the idea of banning trade with Israeli settlements during a meeting on Monday.

The officials met in Brussels to discuss a response to increasing violence by Israeli settlers against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.

"Everybody agrees that the situation in the West Bank is really intolerable," Kallas said at the start of the meeting.

The EU has long struggled to take major decisions on Middle East policy because of deep and long-standing divisions among its 27 member countries, particularly on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Kallas referred to an opinion from the European Commission's legal service that measures were possible without unanimity among EU members.