Five Western countries announced on Tuesday that they would impose sanctions on two far-right Israeli cabinet ministers, a remarkable rebuke of Israel’s leadership and a significant escalation of Western pressure on Israel over settler violence in the West Bank and the conduct of the war in Gaza.
Australia, Britain, Canada, New Zealand and Norway jointly imposed the sanctions, which will restrict the right to travel and freeze the financial assets of the Israeli security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, and the finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich.
Mr. Smotrich, 45, and Mr. Ben-Gvir, 49, are the most hard-line members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet. Both have called for the wholesale expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza, in statements that the British foreign secretary, David Lammy, has previously condemned as “monstrous.”
“Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich have incited extremist violence and serious abuses of Palestinian human rights,” Mr. Lammy and the foreign ministers of the four other countries said in a joint statement on Tuesday. “That is why we have taken action now — to hold those responsible to account.”
While the measures were mainly in response to the violence in the West Bank, British officials said they were also calculated to tighten the pressure on Mr. Netanyahu’s government to negotiate a cease-fire with Hamas in Gaza, at a time when the humanitarian situation in the enclave had become dire.
Israel’s foreign minister, Gideon Saar, reacted defiantly, condemning the move as “unacceptable” and saying the government would meet next week to discuss a response. “It is outrageous that elected representatives and members of the government are subjected to these kind of measures,” Mr. Saar said.