France has banned Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich from entering the country, the French foreign minister said, as part of coordinated sanctions with other countries over settler violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.
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”, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said on Tuesday.
He 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.
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 and mistreated by Israeli soldiers from a Gaza-bound flotilla carrying aid for the Palestinian territory.
France also banned four leaders of settler organisations and 21 violent illegal Israeli settlers.
