5 world powers sanction 2 Israeli far-right ministers

Jerusalem: Britain, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Norway said Tuesday they have imposed sanctions on two far-right Israeli government ministers for allegedly “inciting extremist violence” against Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, the Associated Press reported.

Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich face asset freezes and travel bans from the five countries. The ministers are champions of expanding Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

The decision by Western governments friendly to Israel was a sharp rebuke of Israel's settlement policies in the West Bank and of settler violence, which has spiked since Hamas' October 7, 2023, attack ignited the war in the Gaza Strip.

The five countries' foreign ministers said in a joint statement that Ben-Gvir and Smotrich “have incited extremist violence and serious abuses of Palestinian human rights. Extremist rhetoric advocating the forced displacement of Palestinians and the creation of new Israeli settlements is appalling and dangerous”.

The Biden administration took the rare step of sanctioning radical Israeli settlers implicated in violence in the occupied West Bank — sanctions that were then lifted by President Donald Trump.

Eitay Mack, an Israeli human rights lawyer who spent years campaigning for the sanctions on Smotrich and Ben-Gvir, along with violent West Bank settlers, described the move as “historic”.

“It means the wall of immunity that Israeli politicians had has been broken," he said. “It's unbelievable that it took so long for Western governments to sanction Israeli politicians, and the fact that it's being done while Trump is president is quite amazing,” said Mack. "It is a message to Netanyahu himself that he could be next."

Israel captured the West Bank along with East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip in the 1967 Mideast War. The Palestinians want those territories for their hoped-for future state.

Settlement growth and construction have been promoted by successive Israeli governments stretching back decades, but it has exploded under Netanyahu's far-right coalition, which has settlers in key Cabinet posts.

There are now well over 100 settlements and 500,000 Israeli settlers sprawling across the territory from north to south — a reality, rights groups say, dimming any hopes for an eventual two-state solution.