Israel’s Smotrich, Ben-Gvir Removed from Potential EU Sanctions List – Reports
An Ultra-Orthodox Jewish man looks at an elections billboards of the Blue and White party leaders, from left to right, Moshe Yaalon, Benny Gantz, Yair Lapid and Gabi Ashkenazi, alongside a panel on the right showing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu flanked by extreme right politicians, from the left, Itamar Ben Gvir, Bezalel Smotrich and Michael Ben Ari in Bnei Brak, Israel, Saturday, March 16, 2019. Hebrew reads on the left billboard “The nation of Israel lives” and on the right billboard “Kahana Lives” in a reference to a banned ultranationalist party in the 1994.
MOSCOW (Sputnik) – Far-right Israeli Ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir have been removed from a potential list of EU sanctions targeting Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank, Western media reported on Monday, citing a senior EU official. EU nations are reported to be working on a political agreement to sanction several individuals involved in settler violence in the West Bank. Although the original proposal mentioned Ben-Gvir and Smotrich, their names were subsequently removed from the list, allowing the sanctions to gain the support of 26 out of 27 EU member states, the report said. In September 2025, Western media reported that the European Commission wanted to impose sanctions on Ben-Gvir and Smotrich. The United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, Norway, and New Zealand imposed sanctions on the two politicians on June 10, 2025, for incitement to violence against Palestinians in the West Bank. EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said that EU foreign ministers planned to make a political decision for the first time to impose sanctions on violent Israeli settlers at a meeting on Monday. Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank remains a major point of contention between the country and the international community, as well as a major obstacle to making peace with the Palestinians, who view it as a policy of cementing Israel’s control over Palestinian territories.
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