France Tuesday banned Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich from entering the country, as part of coordinated sanctions with other countries over settler violence against Palestinians.
Smotrich is the second member of the Israeli government to be forbidden from entering France in recent months, after National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir was barred on May 23 for mocking activists detained by Israeli soldiers from a Gaza-bound flotilla carrying aid for the Palestinian territory.
The United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Norway already slapped a travel ban on both ministers in June last year over inciting violence against Palestinians.
Other countries have also banned the ministers, including Spain, Slovenia and most recently Ireland.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said his country was banning Smotrich because he “actively promotes the annexation of the West Bank, which he openly claims, the creation of new settlements in the West Bank, the re-colonisation of Gaza, the economic collapse of the Palestinian Authority and its harmful consequences for the Palestinian population”.
“This is a policy that the overwhelming majority of the international community, firmly committed to the two-state solution, cannot accept,” Barrot wrote on X.
– ‘Scant accountability’ –
France also banned four leaders of settler organisations and 21 violent settlers.
France’s sanctions were in coordination with Britain, Canada, Australia, Norway and New Zealand targeting “those responsible for the escalation of settlement activity and violence in the West Bank”, Barrot said.
Israel’s foreign ministry quickly condemned the sanctions as “disgraceful”.
“The real essence of these steps is the attempt to impose a political stance regarding the right of Jews to settle in the Land of Israel and concerning the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — camouflaged as measures against violence,” ministry spokesman Oren Marmorstein said.
Norway said it would adopt the same sanctions as those announced by the European Union on May 28, as well as impose an entry ban targeting “20 violent settlers”, without naming them.
Along with sanctions against “networks financing and enabling settler attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank”, the United Kingdom also urged British businesses and citizens to refrain from conducting financial activities in Israeli settlements deemed illegal under international law.
“We believe that violent settler groups should not be profiting from the land that they have seized from Palestinians,” Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper told parliament.
The Israeli “government has condemned some settler violence, but that rings hollow when there is scant accountability”, she added.
– Banned ministers –
Ben Gvir became a minister in 2022, after an alliance with the far-right Religious Zionist party of Smotrich came third in legislative elections.
Together, Ben Gvir and Smotrich form a cornerstone of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition government.
Since the war in Gaza broke out in October 2023 with Palestinian militant group Hamas’s attack on Israel, near-daily violence has also rocked the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967.
Israeli soldiers or settlers have killed at least 1,080 Palestinians since then, including both militants and civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Palestinian health ministry data.
Official Israeli figures show that at least 46 Israelis, both civilians and soldiers, have been killed in Palestinian attacks or during Israeli military operations in the same period.
A United Nations-mandated inquiry on Tuesday said Palestinian civilians are caught between “mass atrocities” of Israeli forces, settlers and the brutal rule of Hamas in war-torn Gaza.
“Violence by settlers is the direct outcome of Israeli policies that support, enable and protect their actions,” inquiry commission chair Srinivasan Muralidhar said in a statement.
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