UK imposes sanctions on Israeli ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir

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The United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Norway imposed sanctions and other measures on the Minister of Extremist Finance in Israel Bizalil Sottic and National Security Minister Itamar bin Ghaffir for “their frequent incitement to violence against Palestinian civilians.”

This step represents the first Western sanctions against the Israeli government ministers, as frustration grows on Renew an attack in Gaza And its continuous expansion in the Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank.

In a joint statement, foreign ministers in the five countries said that Bin Ghafir and Smothirish “incited extremist violence and serious violations of Palestinian human rights.”

They said: “The extremist discourse that defends the forced displacement of the Palestinians and the creation of new Israeli settlements is terrible and dangerous. These measures are not acceptable.”

The move was quickly convicted by the Trump administration, as Foreign Minister Marco Rubio called for the reverse of the sanctions. He said: “These sanctions do not make the efforts of the United States to achieve a ceasefire, bring all hostages to the home and end the war.”

It also extracted an angry response from Israel, as Smotrich ordered the cancellation of the decisive waiver that allows Israeli banks to provide services to their Palestinian counterparts, in fact, cutting the Palestinian lenders from the Israeli financial regime.

UK sanctions include Ben-GVIR and Smotrich freezing on any country’s assets and a ban on travel to Britain. They were imposed on a “personal capacity” regarding the treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank, where there was an increase in violence by developed settlers against the Palestinians since the beginning. The war between Israel and Hamas.

The settler violence accompanied a dramatic escalation of Israeli operations against fighters in the West Bank, where he sent the number of Palestinian deaths in the region to its highest levels in two decades.

The Netanyahu government has also announced a tremendous expansion of settlements, which is illegal under international law.

Smotrich and Ben-GVIR, strong members of the Netanyahu coalition, are volunteer settlers who have long demanded to include the West Bank.

Bin Ghaffir said: “We have overcome [the] Pharaoh and we will overcome Care Starmer. “

“Britain has already tried once to prevent us from settling the cradle of our homeland, and we will not allow this to do this again,” Smotrich added.

People who have seen the UK’s preparation for sanctions said that they represent a “major shift” in the approach of the Ministers of the NBA government, which renewed its devastating military operations in Gaza In March, after breaking a fragile truce for two months.

Israel also has severe aid delivery to Gaza, and imposed a totally siege for more than two months, before providing a controversial new system that marginalized the United Nations and put aid distribution in the hands of a private company unknown previously.

The United Nations warned last month that the restrictions had left the Gaza population of 2.1 million people at the risk of starvation.

Israel It is a long -term ally in the UK, but the long war in Gaza, which was killed according to Palestinian officials, has killed more than 54,500 people in the pocket, to avoid relations.

During the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023 on Israel, which sparked the war, the militants killed 1,200 people, according to Israeli officials, and took 250 hostages.

Last month, UK Foreign Minister David Lami was frozen on a new free trade agreement with Israel on what he described as the “hateful” situation caused by his attack in Gaza.

The Labor Party announced that it is suspending all direct weapons sales to Israel in September, although the UK continued to provide the ingredients that were manufactured in the UK to the F-35 fighter plane to a joint global group.

In their statement, the five foreign ministers said, while the measures announced on Tuesday focused on the West Bank, “Of course, this cannot be seen in isolation from the disaster in Gaza.”

They added: “We are still dismayed through the tremendous suffering of civilians, including denial of basic aid.”

On Tuesday, labor deputy Emily Thornbari, Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Commons, called on the government to move forward and recognize a Palestinian state.

“This opportunity cannot be missed,” she said. “These welcoming penalties, but long long is not a substitute for them.”

US officials have pushed back against such a move. On Tuesday, Mike Hakapi, the country’s ambassador to Israel, went further, saying that he does not believe that an independent Palestinian state remained a target of US foreign policy.

“Unless there are some important things that occur to change culture, there is no room for that,” Bloomberg said in an interview.

The Foreign Ministry referred questions about whether the comments were a shift in American policy to the White House.