France to sanction extremist Israeli settlers for ‘unacceptable’ violence against Palestinians

France will impose sanctions on specific extremist Israeli settlers, announced French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna yesterday after she condemned the “unacceptable” violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.

“France has decided to take measures against certain extremist Israeli settlers,” Colonna said at a joint press conference with her British counterpart David Cameron.

“I was able to see for myself the violence committed by certain of these extremist settlers. It’s unacceptable,” she added.

It comes after she recently toured Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, meeting with Palestinian olive farmers in the village of Al-Mazraa Al-Qibliya and being told how their olive harvest was seized by illegal Israeli settlers after the farmers were forced out of their fields.

According to the Times of Israel, France had signalled in early December its consideration of sanctions, including banning them from French territory and freezing the assets of certain settlers, and had called for coordinated European measures.

It also comes after the US has declared its intention earlier this month to impose travel bans on extremist Jewish settlers involved in recent attacks on Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. The announcement was made by Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday, following a warning to Israel from the Biden administration last week regarding the escalation of attacks on Palestinians.

READ: France parliamentarians demand sanctions against Israel amid killing of Foreign Ministry staffer in Gaza

Scores of Palestinian villages have been emptied of their residents by armed Israeli settlers since the start of Israel’s bombing campaign in the besieged Gaza Strip in early October. Settlers, many of whom are Jewish supremacists and subscribe to messianic ideals, have used Israel’s bombardment on Gaza as a cover to terrorise Palestinians in the West Bank in an effort to move them out of the area.

The ethnic cleansing underway has been called “a new Nakba” by Palestinians in the occupied territory. According to the Guardian, Israeli settlers have taken control of ten per cent of so-called Area C in five years, but in the past year alone around 110,000 dunams, or 110 square kilometres (42 square miles), of the West Bank has effectively been annexed by Israel. By way of comparison, the whole built-up area of Israeli settlements constructed since the occupation began in 1967 covers 80 square kilometres, it explained.

Data from the Israeli Peace Now human rights movement indicates that there are about 694,000 settlers, 145 settlements and 140 settlement outposts (unlicensed by the Israeli government) in the occupied West Bank, including occupied East Jerusalem. All settlements and settlers are illegal under international law.