Israel minister Smotrich banned from France

France Tuesday banned Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich from entering the country, the French foreign minister said, in the latest sanction slamming Israeli officials over policies towards Palestinian territories and pro-Palestinian activists.

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.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said Smotrich “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.

He added that four leaders of settler organisations and 21 violent settlers were also banned from French territory.

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.

Barrot said the announcement “imposing new sanctions on those responsible for the intensification of settlement-building and violence in the West Bank” was in tandem with Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Norway.

The five countries announced in June last year that they were banning Ben Gvir and Smotrich from their territories, accusing them of inciting violence against Palestinians, particularly in the occupied West Bank.

The Israeli government at the time condemned the sanctions as “scandalous”.

Other countries have also banned the ministers, including Spain, Slovenia and most recently Ireland.

Firebrand 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.

– ‘Seized from Palestinians’ –

The United Kingdom on Tuesday also urged British businesses and citizens to refrain from conducting financial activities in Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank 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.

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.