Palestine weekly wrap: World sanctions settlers, Israel funds settlements
Key takeaways
- Amnesty calls West Bank ethnic cleansing 'state-sponsored' and international allies bar Finance Minister Smotrich.
- The same day, France, the United Kingdom, Canada and Norway – coordinating with Australia and New Zealand – sanctioned networks financing settler violence.
- Israeli anti-settlement group Peace Now said the cabinet moved to fund 69 settlements in a plan worth $388m, while bypassing standard planning procedures.
Why this matters: an international story with cross-border implications worth tracking.
Amnesty calls West Bank ethnic cleansing 'state-sponsored' and international allies bar Finance Minister Smotrich.
xwhatsapp-strokecopylinkgoogle Add Al Jazeera on Googleinfo Israeli soldiers fire tear gas at Palestinians during a protest against a new Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank village of Deir Abu Mishal, near Ramallah, June 13, 2026 [Mohammed Torokman/Reuters]By Al Jazeera Staff Published On 16 Jun 202616 Jun 2026This week, moves by France to bar a senior Israeli minister, six Western states sanctioned settler networks and an Amnesty International accusation that Israel was implementing a “state-sponsored” campaign of ethnic cleansing in a drive to effectively annex parts of the West Bank, did little to restrain Israel.
The Israeli cabinet advanced the funding of dozens of new settlements, moved to legalise the very outposts whose residents terrorise Palestinian communities, and took a step it had avoided for three decades: establishing a permanent military base inside areas of the West Bank supposedly under full Palestinian administrative control.