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New Zealand has joined Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and Norway in placing travel bans on two “extremist” Israeli politicians, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says.
The bans will prevent Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir from travelling to New Zealand.
“Our action today is not against the Israeli people, who suffered immeasurably on October 7 and who have continued to suffer through Hamas’s ongoing refusal to release all hostages,” Peters says.
“Nor is it designed to sanction the wider Israeli Government.
“Rather, the travel bans are targeted at two individuals who are using their leadership positions to actively undermine peace and security and remove prospects for a two-state solution.”
Peters says New Zealand is a long-standing supporter of the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“Ministers Smotrich and Ben-Gvir have severely and deliberately undermined that by personally advocating for the annexation of Palestinian land and the expansion of illegal settlements, while inciting violence and forced displacement.
“New Zealand’s consistent and historic position has been that Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories are a violation of international law.
“Settlements and associated violence undermine the prospects for a viable two-state solution.”
Today’s targeted sanctions are consistent with New Zealand’s approach to other foreign policy issues, Peters says.
New Zealand has also targeted travel bans on politicians and military leaders advocating violence or undermining democracy in other countries in the past, including Russia, Belarus and Myanmar.
The international community is overwhelmingly in favour of a future Palestinian state as part of a negotiated two-state solution, Peters says.
“The crisis in Gaza has made returning to a meaningful political process all the more urgent.
“New Zealand will continue to advocate for an end to the current conflict and an urgent restart of the Middle East peace process.”
