PARIS, Aug 19 (Reuters) – French foreign minister Jean-Noel Barrot condemned on Wednesday violence in the West Bank by Israeli settlers against Palestinians, and added that this justified France’s recent sanctions against Israel’s far-right police minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.
• “What is happening today in the West Bank is utterly disgraceful and should fill us all with revulsion,” Barrot wrote on X.
• “This is why we have sanctioned Israeli minister Ben-Gvir, whose recent comments are unacceptable and inhuman,” added Barrot.
• In May, France announced it was banning Ben-Gvir from French territory.
• Barrot reiterated that new sanctions could be implemented against Israeli settlers deemed to be involved in violence against Palestinians in the West Bank.
• In June, Britain, Canada, France and Norway announced coordinated sanctions against Israeli networks involved in financing, enabling and carrying out violence in the West Bank.
• Israel’s foreign ministry rejected the June measures and said the governments imposing them had failed to control antisemitism and were fuelling it with such sanctions.
• Hundreds of thousands of Israelis have settled among millions of Palestinians in land captured by Israel in a 1967 war.
• Nearly all countries and a range of U.N. bodies consider that such settlements violate international law, although Israel disputes this, citing historical and biblical ties to the land.
(Reporting by Sudip Kar-Gupta; Editing by Hugh Lawson)
