DANGEROUS LIAISON

Why India enabled Israel's genocide in Gaza

- S SHUBHENDU

BEZALEL SMOTRICH IS BANNED from entering Australia, Britain, Canada, New Zealand and Norway. The governments of the five countries issued a joint statement, on 10 June 2025, announcing sanctions against the Israeli finance minister—as well as against the minister of national security, Itamar Ben-Gvir—“for inciting violence against Palestinians in the West Bank” through “extremist rhetoric which calls for Palestinians to be driven from their homes, encourages violence and human rights abuses and fundamentally rejects the two-state solution.” Slovenia, Spain and the Netherlands followed suit, with the Dutch government recording the ban in the Schengen Information System, obliging all 29 member states of Europe’s open-borders Schengen Area to enforce it. Karim Khan, the chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court, was reportedly planning to request arrest warrants against both men when he was sent on administrative leave, in May, over alleged sexual misconduct.

Smotrich is a co-founder of Regavim, an organisation that, over the past two decades, has lobbied successive Israeli governments and the courts to accelerate the construction of illegal settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories. After Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu failed to win a majority in the 2022 general election, he made coalition pacts with Smotrich and Ben-Gvir. In addition to the finance ministry, Smotrich was given control over the military administration in the West Bank. Since then, several Regavim members have been placed in positions of power, many of its recommendations have become government policy, and settlements have grown at an unprecedented rate.