Key facts
- Britain has advised businesses against economic and financial activity in illegal Israeli settlements.
- The UK will impose sanctions on six entities and one individual.
- Sanctions target networks financing and enabling settler attacks against Palestinians.
- France has barred Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and settler leaders from entering the country.
- France and allies announced sanctions against those responsible for intensifying colonisation and violence in the occupied West Bank.
Britain has announced for the first time that there should be no economic involvement in illegal Israeli settlements. The UK will also impose fresh sanctions against networks financing and enabling settler attacks against Palestinians, in coordination with France, Norway, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia. The British government stated it will sanction six entities and one individual.
Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper is expected to state in parliament that these measures target those fueling violence and that settler expansion and violence are illegal and a threat to long-term peace. The sanctioned entities include the Farms Association, which provides financial and organizational support to Israeli settler farms and outposts in the West Bank, including those associated with violence, intimidation, and forced displacement of Palestinians. Ari Artzenu is also sanctioned for promoting, financing, and resourcing settler farms and outposts associated with violence against Palestinians.
These new measures fall short of a call by over 230 MPs for a full ban on the import of goods from illegal Israeli settlements. Previously, the Labour party had called for such a ban. The new policy could have implications for local council pension funds, which have previously voted to boycott companies complicit in Israeli war crimes or benefiting from the occupation. However, in January, the Labour government's Communities Secretary Steve Reed warned Labour-administered councils against boycotting Israeli businesses, citing government guidance from 2016 that prohibits procurement boycotts against Israeli firms.
In May 2025, the Labour government sanctioned prominent Israeli settlers, including Daniella Weiss. Last June, the UK, alongside allies, sanctioned Israeli ministers Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich over incitement of violence. An International Court of Justice (ICJ) opinion in 2024 ruled that Israel's occupation of Palestinian territory is illegal. According to Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, Israel has displaced over 4,000 people from 59 Palestinian communities since October 7, 2023.
France has barred Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, together with four leaders of settler organisations, and 21 violent settlers, from entering the country. In a statement on X on Tuesday, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot announced that France is imposing new sanctions “against those responsible for intensifying colonisation and violence in the occupied West Bank,” in a parallel move by Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Norway. Bezalel Smotrich is actively promoting the annexation of the West Bank, which he openly advocates, the establishment of new settlements in the West Bank, the recolonisation of Gaza, and the economic collapse of the Palestinian Authority, along with its devastating 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.