Western Sanctions on Israeli Settlers Criticized as Insufficient

Israeli settlers and far-right ministers have been slapped with new Western sanctions. But human rights groups and Palestinian campaigners say the measures fail to address systemic state complicity in the occupation of Palestinian territories.

While the latest actions have been framed as a decisive stand against settler violence, political analysts and legal experts argue that isolating individual actors serves to deflect from the lack of broader institutional penalties against the Israeli government itself.

On June 9, 2026, the United Kingdom, alongside Australia, Canada, France, New Zealand, and Norway, announced coordinated sanctions against networks financing and executing settler violence. The UK targeted six entities and one individual, while France banned Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, three settler group leaders, and 21 settlers from entering the country.

Smotrich and far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir have been censored by several European countries previously for their rhetoric against Palestinians and support for settler violence.

‘Too little, too late’

Critics point out that the limited scope of the sanctions does not match the scale of the crisis.

Jennifer Larbie, Christian Aid’s head of UK influencing, described the decision to sanction so few entities as “derisory” and a clear example of the UK government doing “too little too late” while Palestinians are forced from their land.

This sentiment was echoed by Mustafa Barghouti, secretary-general of the Palestinian National Initiative. He told Al Jazeera Arabic that Western leaders are facing unprecedented public backlash for their ties to Israel.

“These governments are trying to cover up their shortcomings with low-value measures,” Barghouti said, arguing that the sanctions reflect a need to manage public anger rather than a genuine shift in state policy.

He stressed that the Israeli government itself is the entity that plans, funds, and executes settlement expansion.

Israel has undermined the Oslo Accords, which called for the freezing of settlements. At the time of the Oslo Accords in the early 1990s, some 250,000 settlers lived in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. The settlement population has now grown to more than 700,000, while some three million Palestinians live in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Despite international legal obligations – and a July 2024 International Court of Justice (ICJ) advisory opinion explicitly stating that all states are under an obligation not to recognise or assist Israel’s illegal occupation – the European Union has largely failed to implement a blanket ban on trade with settlement-based entities.

While EU guidelines state that agreements with Israel do not apply to the occupied territories, member states have routinely stopped short of imposing binding economic embargoes, allowing goods produced on stolen Palestinian land to continually enter European markets.

Products such as Medjool dates, avocados, wines and cosmetics, among others produced in the occupied West Bank settlements, are exported to Europe.

Shielding the architects

By focusing on individual settler outposts or far-right figures like Israeli ministers Smotrich and Ben-Gvir, Western states risk creating a false distinction between “extremist” settlers and the Israeli state apparatus.

Kristyan Benedict, Amnesty International UK’s crisis response manager, stated that targeting settler financing networks while ignoring the ministers who are running settler campaigns is not meaningful accountability.

“It leaves the architects untouched,” Benedict said, calling on the UK to sanction Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, and other senior officials. Netanyahu and Gallant face International Criminal Court (ICC) warrants for war crimes.

An inquiry by the United Nations has previously found that Israeli authorities were directly involved in settler attacks that have killed, injured, and displaced Palestinians, with Israeli forces actively providing protection.

Both Ben-Gvir and Smotrich have long track records of inciting violence and expanding the occupation. Following a deadly settler rampage in the Palestinian town of Huwara in early 2023, Smotrich notoriously declared that the village should be “wiped out” by the Israeli state.

Furthermore, Smotrich has used his dual role in the Defence Ministry to quietly transfer administrative powers over the West Bank from the military to civilian control, a move legal experts describe as de facto annexation. Meanwhile, Ben-Gvir has personally distributed thousands of assault rifles to settler “national guard” members, and has frequently praised settlers accused of murdering Palestinians, portraying them as heroes defending Israel.

Mohanad Mustafa, an academic and expert on Israeli affairs, noted that figures like Smotrich and Ben-Gvir do not regularly travel to Europe and rely primarily on political and financial ties with the United States.

“These sanctions do not target the Israeli government,” Mustafa told Al Jazeera Arabic, explaining that the measures inadvertently create a comfortable narrative for Israel by portraying the extremism as isolated to specific ministers rather than a state-sponsored enterprise.

For its part, Israel swiftly rejected the sanctions.

Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Oren Marmorstein called them “disgraceful measures” and an attempt to impose a political stance regarding the “right of Jews to settle in the Land of Israel”. Under international law, Israel’s settlements built on Palestinian lands are illegal. A UN resolution in September 2024 called for an end to the occupation within a year, but Israel has failed to comply. In fact, it has doubled down and announced more settlements.

Israel routinely denies that its troops protect violent settlers, claiming such acts are rogue incidents that violate military protocol. But numerous reports by media and rights groups show Israeli forces’ complicity in attacks on Palestinians. Thousands of Palestinians have been jailed without trial, and Palestinians have recounted horrific abuse inside Israeli custody.

The arms and trade loophole

Campaigners point out that Western countries’ actions come as they continue to sell arms and engage in free trade with Israel, which faces a case of genocide at the ICJ. Most rights organisations and genocide scholars have said that Israeli actions in Gaza do constitute genocide.

The UK government recently updated its business guidance to explicitly advise against economic activity in illegal settlements, but it stressed that it continues to support trade with Israel within its 1967 borders.

Larbie called it “pathetic merely to ‘advise’ British businesses against activity in illegal Israeli settlements when there are no real consequences for them”, urging a complete ban on trade and investment with settlements.

Former UK Member of Parliament Claudia Webbe highlighted this contradiction, noting that Western countries themselves have enabled Israel’s long-standing impunity.

“What is the point of imposing sanctions on five settlement organisations? They must impose sanctions on the entire state, not the settlement,” Webbe said, emphasising that the UK and EU remain complicit by continuing to arm and fund Israel.

While the UK under Prime Minister Keir Starmer has paused free trade talks with Israel and suspended some arms export licences, critics demand a total halt.

Despite suspending about 30 out of 350 arms export licences in late 2024, the UK continues to sell components for F-35 fighter jets and other critical military hardware to Israel.

Domestically, the UK government has cracked down on pro-Palestine solidarity, utilising sweeping public order laws to arrest activists and restrict mass demonstrations.

Other European powers have also maintained close defence ties with Israel. Germany, for instance, remains Israel’s second-largest arms supplier after the US, accounting for roughly 30 percent of the country’s conventional weapons imports.

Barghouti pointed out that the European Union provides up to 19 percent of Israel’s weaponry. He urged the EU to follow through on demands made by countries like Spain to completely dismantle the EU-Israel Association Agreement.

Spain and the Republic of Ireland have emerged as among the few European nations taking concrete diplomatic action. Both officially recognised the State of Palestine, formally joined South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the ICJ, and suspended all new arms export licences to the Israeli military.

Spanish and Irish officials have repeatedly spearheaded efforts in Brussels to suspend the Association Agreement, which governs economic ties between the bloc and Israel.