Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich face asset freezes and travel bans from the five countries.
The ministers are champions of expanding Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
The choice made by Western governments allied with Israel represents a significant admonishment of Israel’s settlement activities in the West Bank and the rise in settler violence, which has intensified following Hamas’ attack on October 7, 2023, sparking the conflict in the Gaza Strip.
The foreign ministers of the five countries issued a joint statement condemning Ben-Gvir and Smotrich, stating that they “have incited extremist violence and serious abuses of Palestinian human rights.”
Extremist rhetoric advocating the forced displacement of Palestinians and the creation of new Israeli settlements is appalling and dangerous.”
Israel’s Foreign Ministry said earlier it had been informed of the sanctions.
Smotrich, who serves as the country’s finance minister, revealed on social media that he learned about Britain’s decision to sanction him for impeding the feasibility of a Palestinian state. “We are determined to continue building,” he declared.
“We overcame Pharoah, we’ll overcome Starmer’s Wall,” Ben-Gvir, the national security minister, wrote on social media.
Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Saar called the move “outrageous.” He said he had discussed it with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and they would meet next week to discuss Israel’s response.
The Biden administration took the rare step of sanctioning radical Israeli settlers implicated in violence in the occupied West Bank â sanctions that were then lifted by US President Donald Trump.
Eitay Mack, an Israeli human rights lawyer who spent years campaigning for the sanctions on Smotrich and Ben-Gvir â along with violent West Bank settlers â described the move as “historic.”
“It means the wall of immunity that Israeli politicians had has been broken,” he said.
“It’s unbelievable that it took so long for Western governments to sanction Israeli politicians, and the fact that it’s being done while Trump is president is quite amazing,” said Mack.
“It is a message to Netanyahu himself that he could be next.”
Israel captured the West Bank along with east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip in the 1967 Mideast war. The Palestinians want those territories for their hoped-for future state.
Settlement growth and construction have been promoted by successive Israeli governments stretching back decades, but it has exploded under Netanyahu’s far-right coalition, which has settlers in key Cabinet posts.
There are now well over 100 settlements and 500,000 Israeli settlers sprawling across the territory from north to south â a reality, rights groups say, dimming any hopes for an eventual two-state solution.
