France to Sanction 28 Israeli Settlers

Facts

• France on Tuesday said it will sanction what it deemed 28 'extremist Israeli settlers,' barring their entry into French territory. The decision is reportedly related to accusations of violence against Palestinian civilians in the West Bank.¹
• The government further commented that Israeli settlements — some of which its report claims are located on land owned privately by Palestinians — violate international law, and threaten the eventual establishment of a Palestinian state.²
• The news comes as Paris is also pushing the EU to impose sanctions on allegedly violent Israeli settlers. It has placed the responsibility of stopping settler violence and prosecuting any perpetrators on the Israeli government.³
• France pointed to rising violence against Palestinians by some of the estimated 720K Israeli settlers in Palestinian territories. UN figures reportedly show that such violence has doubled since Hamas' terror attack on Israel in October prompted military response from the nation.⁴
• The UK also barred entry to and froze the assets of four individuals — Moshe Sharvit, Yinon Levi, Zvi Bar Yosef, and Ely Federman — who were found guilty of perpetrating violence, including threatening Palestinians at gunpoint. Belgium sanctioned some individuals in January for similar reasons.⁵
• In a rare step by one of Israel's crucial allies, the US declared in December 2023 that it would refuse visas to anyone who 'undermin[es] peace, security or stability in the West Bank' and asked Tel Aviv to do more to spare Gaza's civilians.⁶

Sources: ¹Le Monde, ²The New York Times, ³The Times of Israel, ⁴Middle East Monitor, ⁵EU Observer and ⁶France 24.

Narratives

• Pro-Palestine narrative, as provided by The Guardian. Western sanctions against Israeli settlers are a positive first in both persuading Netanyahu to curtail the influence of his extremist allies and demonstrating to Palestinians that the West is not their enemy. Still, more must be done to ensure that Israeli expansion into the occupied West Bank — illegal according to the Geneva Convention of 1949 — comes to an end. Settlers are encouraged by the government's lack of action, and Biden must recognize that Israeli crimes in Gaza are no different than Russia's crimes in Ukraine.
• Pro-Israel narrative, as provided by The Jerusalem Post. Those committing violence against Palestinians are a small minority of individuals among the settler community, and they are already under investigation for their crimes. They cannot, however, be compared to Hamas terrorists who have ruled the Gaza Strip with an iron fist for over a decade. By sanctioning Israeli settlers at this crucial time — especially after over 1K Israelis were slaughtered on Oct. 7 — Western states are drawing a morally outrageous equivalence between Hamas terrorism and individual acts of violence committed by a small fringe.

Predictions