- Israel refused entry to two left-wing Swedish MEPs at Ben Gurion Airport as they sought to visit the occupied West Bank.
- Israel said the pair had consistently acted against Israel, accusing them of spreading false allegations including genocide and deliberate targeting of children.
- MEPs said they planned meetings with human rights groups and refugee camps; EU and Sweden protested and Palestinian officials condemned the exclusion.
Israel said on Monday that it had refused entry to two left-wing Swedish MEPs who wanted to visit the occupied West Bank.
Jonas Sjostedt and Hanna Gedin, members of Sweden’s Left Party, were turned away on Sunday at Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport, the primary gateway for visitors to the Palestinian territory.
Israel’s foreign ministry said the pair had “consistently acted against Israel”, including by calling for international legal proceedings against Israelis.
“On various public occasions, they have spread false accusations against Israel, including allegations of genocide, deliberate starvation and the intentional targeting of children and medical personnel,” the ministry said in a statement.
UN investigators, who do not speak for the global body as a whole, charged in June that Israel was deliberately targeting Palestinian children in an ongoing “genocide” in Gaza.
Israel fiercely rejected the finding and accused Hamas of using Palestinian children as human shields.
Sjostedt, in a Facebook post, said the two MEPs planned to meet with human rights and charitable organisations, including Save the Children, and to visit refugee camps.
“We were not going to meet the Palestinian Authority. The EU’s and Sweden’s embassies in Israel have protested against Israel’s decision,” they wrote.
Rawhi Fattouh, president of the Palestinian National Council, the West Bank-based legislative body, called on European parliaments to speak out against the exclusion of critical voices.
The denial of entry is “an attempt to impose silence by force and turn criticism of the occupation into an accusation, in clear disregard for international law and the moral immunity afforded to parliamentary work”, he said.
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