Palestine weekly wrap: World sanctions settlers, Israel funds settlements
This week, moves by France to bar a senior Israeli minister, six Western states sanctioned settler networks and an Amnesty International accusation that Israel was implementing a “state-sponsored” campaign of ethnic cleansing in a drive to effectively annex parts of the West Bank
This week, moves by France to bar a senior Israeli minister, six Western states sanctioned settler networks and an Amnesty International accusation that Israel was implementing a “state-sponsored” campaign of ethnic cleansing in a drive to effectively annex parts of the West Bank, did little to restrain Israel.
The Israeli cabinet advanced the funding of dozens of new settlements, moved to legalise the very outposts whose residents terrorise Palestinian communities, and took a step it had avoided for three decades: establishing a permanent military base inside areas of the West Bank supposedly under full Palestinian administrative control.
On June 9 , France banned Finance Minister, Bezalel Smotrich, from entering the country, alongside four settler organisation leaders and 21 individual settlers, with Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot citing Smotrich’s promotion of West Bank annexation, the resettlement of Gaza and the engineered “economic collapse” of the Palestinian Authority.
The same day, France, the United Kingdom, Canada and Norway – coordinating with Australia and New Zealand – sanctioned networks financing settler violence. On June 10 , Amnesty International accused Israel of a years-long, state-sponsored campaign of ethnic cleansing in the West Bank designed to accelerate annexation; the Israeli military rejected the charge. Addressing the UN Security Council that day, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned of a “presumption of impunity” across the occupied territory, citing settler violence “now averaging six attacks per day”, displacement “at levels not seen since 1967”, and an attempted annexation that he said would have “no legal validity”.
Israel’s answer came within days. Israeli anti-settlement group Peace Now said the cabinet moved to fund 69 settlements in a plan worth $388m, while bypassing standard planning procedures. Peace Now added that the government has approved or legalised 103 settlements since late 2022, 51 of them entirely new, with many of the newly funded sites in strategically sensitive areas, such as the South Hebron Hills and the Jordan Valley.
Such political backing for the increasingly brazen settler movement comes as the Oslo Accords’ territorial divisions, which nominally place Areas A and B of the West Bank under Palestinian partial or full control, are being eroded in unprecedented fashion by Israeli authorities. On June 11 , Haaretz reported the Israeli military announcing it was establishing a permanent post in Jenin refugee camp – the first standing presence within Area A since Oslo, an area meant to be under full Palestinian civil and security control. The army said the post would “regulate the deployment of forces”.
As the cabinet weighed legalising some of the most violent outposts, the drive to build new ones deeper into Palestinian-administered land played out most visibly northwest of Ramallah.
In Deir Abu Mash’al, residents spent six consecutive days attempting to stop settlers establishing an illegal outpost on al-Qarana hill. After villagers repeatedly dismantled a settler tent, settlers erected a second on June 15 , attacking residents and a council member and injuring four Palestinians, one critically, while Israeli forces fired tear gas and live ammunition, according to Wafa and local activists.
