Published On 9/6/2026
The imposition of sanctions by European countries on Israeli settlers and ministers does not mean an intention by these countries to punish Israel, as much as it is a continuation of the series of concealment behind these ineffective measures to continue supporting and financing its government.
The governments of France, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Norway announced on Tuesday the imposition of sanctions, including preventing entry to settlers and settlement entities, as well as to Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich.
These countries attributed the new sanctions to what they described as “horrific violence” practiced by them against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, while Israel declared its categorical rejection of what it described as “disgraceful measures.”
While these sanctions show that these countries are investigating settler violence, after the UN report that clearly confirmed the government’s protection of these violations, at the same time they “reveal the insistence of these countries to hide behind punishing some people for continuing to support Israel and supply it with weapons,” says former British Parliament member Claudia Webb.
Governments are not serious
Western countries – including Britain, as Webb said on the “Beyond the News” program – “do not ignore these violations, but they do not punish Israel as a state, and thus they continue their complicity with it, and continue to arm it in clear violation of its duties.”
If these countries truly desire to put an end to these violations that aim to end the Palestinian presence in the West Bank to erase any hope of building an independent Palestinian state, according to Webb’s words, “they must stop supporting and financing Israel, stop supplying it with weapons, and impose clear sanctions on it, not just on a few settlement organizations.”
These same countries, as the former British representative said, “confirm in their reports that Israel’s persistence in its behavior is the reason for its impunity, ignoring that they are the ones who help it achieve this impunity.”
The evidence for this is that Benjamin Netanyahu’s government only last February approved the construction of 22 new settlement outposts, without these Western countries taking a position on this decision, “even though 80% of the British, for example, say that they do not support their government’s relationship with Israel, and refuse to continue arming it,” and therefore “these policies must continue to be rejected,” in Webb’s opinion.
Not effective
The Secretary-General of the Palestinian National Initiative, Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, does not differ from the previous opinion, but he believes that the Palestinian communities in these countries must cooperate with organizations supporting Palestine to impose more pressure on these governments.
Europe supplied Israel with 19% of the weapons it used in its war on the Gaza Strip, says Barghouti, and therefore these sanctions “reflect the extreme embarrassment it finds towards its people, whose rejection of Israel is increasing, even though they will not affect the construction of the settlements that are funded by the government and protected by the occupying army.”
The same applies to the Palestinian Authority, which Barghouti believes must impose more pressure on Europe to punish Israel and boycott it commercially and militarily, and not to punish the settlements.
The authority must also ask these countries that declare their support for the two-state solution about their position on Israel, which the spokesman said “is slaughtering this solution every day.”
As for the expert on Israeli affairs, Dr. Muhannad Mustafa, he believes that the impact of these sanctions “does not go beyond harming the narrative of victimhood that Israel adopts, but they will not affect its policies based primarily on the United States.”
Even imposing sanctions on individual Israeli ministers “does not mean punishing the government that approves and finances the construction of settlements, and not the minister himself,” according to Mustafa.
It is true that Tel Aviv does not ignore these sanctions as a matter of diplomacy, Mustafa says, “but at the same time it sends a quarter of its exports to Europe, which in turn supplies it with many weapons.”
The bottom line, in the speaker’s opinion, is that Israel “is relying only on the United States in its current colonial project, because the current West Bank settlements are funded by the government of Israel and right-wing American parties, and some of the settlements’ agricultural projects are funded directly by America.”
Western sanctions and an Israeli attack
Last month, Paris prevented National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir from entering its territory after he published a video showing abuse of detained activists from the “Resilience Flotilla” seeking to deliver humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip.
Ben Gvir and Smotrich form the cornerstone of the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of committing genocide and war crimes against the Palestinians.
In the same context, Ireland also banned the entry of the two ministers recently, and Britain prevented them from entering in June last year, before other countries followed suit, including Spain and Slovenia.
In its new step, Britain announced on Tuesday that it would impose a package of sanctions on 6 entities and one individual involved in financing, enabling and implementing settler violence in the West Bank.
The British government threatened to take further measures unless the situation improved, after a UN investigation concluded that the Israeli authorities were directly involved in settler attacks that led to the death, injury, and displacement of Palestinians in the West Bank, while Israeli security forces provided protection for the settlers.
The Israeli Foreign Ministry rejected these measures, which it described as “disgraceful measures,” accusing these countries of “miserable failure in combating rampant anti-Semitism in their countries.”
Not only that, Israel considered that these countries “seek to impose a political position on the right of Jews to live in the Land of Israel, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, under the guise of combating violence.”
