The UK, Australia, Canada, France and Norway have imposed sanctions on what they call “networks” involved in financing and enabling attacks against Palestinian civilians by Jewish settlers in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
The move is designed to “hold extremist settlers accountable for the horrific levels of settler violence”, the five countries said.
France also barred far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich from entering the country. He has wide authority over government policies on settlements in the West Bank, which are illegal under international law.
Israel said it rejected the “disgraceful measures”, calling them political acts “camouflaged as measures against violence”.
Israel has built about 160 settlements housing 700,000 Jews since it occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem – land Palestinians want, along with Gaza, for a hoped-for future state – during the 1967 Middle East war. An estimated 3.3 million Palestinians live alongside them.
There has been a surge in attacks by settlers on Palestinians and their property in the West Bank since the start of the Gaza war, which was triggered by the Hamas-led attack on Israel on 7 October 2023.
The UN documented 1,835 attacks by settlers against Palestinians in 2025 that resulted in casualties or damage to property, in around 280 communities across the West Bank.
At least seven Palestinians were killed and 832 injured in those attacks – both representing 130% increases compared to the previous year’s figures.
Settlement expansion has also risen sharply since Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu returned to power in 2022 at the head of a right-wing, pro-settler coalition.
It has approved more than 100 new settlements across the West Bank, according to the Israeli watchdog Peace Now. Some already existed as settler outposts that were built without government authorisation and have now been made legal under Israeli law.
“For too long, violent settlers have been able to act with near impunity, and settlement expansion and creation of outposts continue with the support and facilitation of the Government of Israel,” said the joint statement from the British, Australian, Canadian, French and Norwegian foreign ministers. “In some cases, settler violence takes place under the protection of Israel’s security forces”
“We continue to urge the Government of Israel to take action to ensure meaningful accountability for violence in the West Bank,” they added.
The Foreign Office said the UK was imposing sanctions on six entities and one individual accused of being “involved in financing, enabling and carrying out settler violence in the occupied West Bank”.
They would face asset freezes, as well as travel bans and director disqualifications where appropriate, it added.
The entities included an association that provided financial support to settler farms and outposts, and a construction company whose resources had been used to destroy Palestinian land and property, the Foreign Office said.
It also announced that, for the first time, the UK’s official guidance would “explicitly advise businesses against economic and financial activity in illegal settlements”.
Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper told the House of Commons: “We believe that violent settler groups should not be profiting from the land that they have seized from Palestinians.”
She added that the Israeli government had “condemned some settler violence, but that rings hollow when there is scant accountability”.
France’s Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said it had banned Bezalel Smotrich from entering the country 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”.
Four leaders of settler organisations and 21 “violent settlers” had also been barred, he added.
Norway said it was barring “20 violent settlers” from the country, while Australia published co-ordinated sanctions alongside New Zealand last week.
Last June, the UK, Australia, Canada and Norway sanctioned Smotrich and far-right Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir over what they said were “repeated incitements of violence against Palestinian communities”.
Israel’s foreign ministry condemned the latest sanctions.
“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,” it said in a statement.
The ministry said such “anti-Israeli policies” only served to fuel the antisemitism that was “rampant” in the countries involved.
The Palestinian foreign ministry welcomed the joint statement by the UK and its allies, which it said rejected “the occupation’s measures to annex the West Bank”.
By BBC News
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