France bans Israel's finance minister

France Tuesday banned Israel's far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich from entering the country, the French foreign minister said, as part of coordinated sanctions with other countries over settler violence against Palestinians, Report informs via France 24.

France's sanctions were in coordination with Britain, Canada, Australia, Norway and New Zealand targeting "those responsible for the escalation of settlement activity and violence in the West Bank", French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said on X.

He said Smotrich "actively promotes the annexation of the West Bank, which he openly claims, the creation of new settlements in the West Bank, the re-colonisation of Gaza, the economic collapse of the Palestinian Authority and its harmful consequences for the Palestinian population".

"This is a policy that the overwhelming majority of the international community, firmly committed to the two-state solution, cannot accept," Barrot wrote on X.

Smotrich is the second member of the Israeli government to be forbidden from entering France in recent months, after National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir was barred on May 23 for mocking activists detained by Israeli soldiers from a Gaza-bound flotilla.

France also banned four leaders of settler organisations and 21 violent settlers.

Ben-Gvir and Smotrich had already been banned by the five other countries in June last year, over accusations of inciting violence against Palestinians, particularly in the occupied West Bank.

The Israeli government at the time condemned the sanctions as "scandalous".