The French Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced on Tuesday February 13 that it had adopted “sanctions” against twenty-eight “extremist Israeli settlers” guilty of “violence against Palestinian civilians in the West Bank”, in a press release.
“France reaffirms its firm condemnation of this unacceptable violence. As we have stated on numerous occasions, it is the responsibility of the Israeli authorities to put an end to it and prosecute its perpetrators,” the ministry wrote. These twenty-eight individuals are “targeted by an administrative ban from French territory”, specifies the Quai d’Orsay, which said it is “working” on “the adoption of sanctions at European level” against Israeli settlers in the West Bank guilty of violence against Palestinian civilians.
“Colonization is illegal under international law and must stop. Its continuation is incompatible with the creation of a viable Palestinian state, which is the only solution so that Israelis and Palestinians can live, side by side, in peace and security,” the Ministry of Foreign Affairs further believes.
The United States and the United Kingdom have also taken sanctions against “extremist settlers”, but the European Union (EU), which must take such decisions unanimously, has not yet managed to find a solution. agreement on the subject, due to opposition from countries such as Hungary and the Czech Republic, according to diplomatic sources.
The United States and the EU are pleading in favor of a two-state solution, which is opposed by the Israeli government, engaged in a war against Palestinian Hamas in Gaza, after the bloody attack on October 7, led by the Islamist movement in Israel.
This conflict has repercussions in the West Bank, a Palestinian territory occupied since 1967 by Israel, which has been shaken by an upsurge in violence since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. According to the Palestinian Authority, more than 380 Palestinians have been killed since then by Israeli soldiers or settlers in the West Bank.
More than 2.9 million Palestinians live in the occupied West Bank, separated from the Gaza Strip by Israeli territory. About 490,000 Israelis also live there, in settlements deemed illegal under international law.
