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EXCERPT:
France on Tuesday banned Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich from entering the country, the French foreign minister said, slamming him for actively promoting the annexation of the West Bank and the “re-colonisation” of Gaza.
“Four leaders of settler organisations, and twenty-one violent settlers” were also banned from French territory, Jean-Noël Barrot wrote on X, condemning a “policy that the overwhelming majority of the international community, firmly committed to the two-state solution, cannot accept”.
The minister said the announcement “imposing new sanctions on those responsible for the intensification of settlement-building and violence in the West Bank” was in tandem with Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Norway.
Smotrich, of the far-right Religious Zionist party, is the second Israeli minister France has banned from its territory in recent months.
Last month, France banned National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir for mocking bound activists seized by Israeli soldiers on a Gaza-bound flotilla carrying aid for the besieged Palestinian territory.
