The United Kingdom’s Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office (FCDO) announced coordinated sanctions against enablers of settler violence in the West Bank on June 9, according to a press release.
Among the six entities sanctioned by Whitehall are two organisations, Artzenu and Shivat Zion Lerigvey Admata, that The New Arab (TNA) revealed to have been raising millions of US dollars from donors from Canada, the US and the UK, to buy military equipment destined to West Bank settlers. Israeli investigative outlet Shomrin also looked into these two groups and their fundraising networks.
The TNA investigation, published in October 2024 and shortlisted for the 2025 Amnesty Media Awards, showed that Artzenu and Shivat Zion Lerigvey Admata had raised funds for armed rapid response squads (kitot konenut) and provided military training to settlers. The two organisations also received almost $2 million in Israeli government subsidies between 2021 and 2024.
The sanctions were introduced as a coordinated move by the UK, Canada, Norway, New Zealand, and Australia to target Israeli settlers’ violence against Palestinians. Since October 2023, the occupied West Bank has witnessed an upsurge in attacks committed by Israeli forces and settlers.
Rights groups said that despite the new measures, much more needs to be done to put an end to the systematic violence to which Palestinians in the occupied territory are subjected.
France, meanwhile, banned Israel’s far right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich from entering the country over his promotion of the annexation of the West Bank and re-colonisation of Gaza.
Smotrich has been a key advocate of the E1 settlement plan in East Jerusalem, which will bifurcate the occupied West Bank and, in his own words, “[bury] the idea of a Palestinian state”.
The UK sanctions package stopped short of banning trade with illegal settlements, which EU member states Spain and Slovenia announced last year, despite support from around a third of the ruling Labour government’s MPs. Ireland, the Netherlands, and Belgium are considering similar bans.
The International Court of Justice in 2024 ruled Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory illegal under international law and directed countries not to aid or assist it.
Amnesty International recently published a report, in which it accused Israel of carrying out state-sanctioned ethnic cleansing of Palestinian Bedouin and herder communities in Area C, the portion of the West Bank under full Israeli military and civil control.
At least 117 Palestinian Bedouin and herding communities, comprising a total of 5,910 people, were partially or fully displaced from their land between January 2023 and April 2026, according to the report; most of this displacement was attributed to settler attacks.
