Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said she will use Denmark’s six-month presidency of the Council of the European Union to seek sanctions on Israel, arguing that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has “gone too far.” In an interview published 16 August, Frederiksen described Netanyahu as “a problem in himself” and called the humanitarian situation in Gaza “absolutely appalling and catastrophic.” Frederiksen singled out Israel’s revival of the long-stalled E1 settlement project near East Jerusalem, warning that the construction of 3,401 housing units would sever the West Bank and make a two-state solution nearly impossible. She said Denmark is considering trade, research and targeted individual measures and “is not ruling anything out,” but has yet to secure unanimous backing from other EU members. The United Nations Human Rights Office a day earlier said the E1 plan violates international law, risks the forced eviction of Palestinians and could constitute a war crime by transferring an occupying power’s civilian population into occupied territory. France, the United Kingdom, the wider EU and the United States have also criticised the project, while Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said the expansion would “bury the idea of a Palestinian state.”