Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, both of the far-right members of the Israeli government, are prohibited from entering Slovenia.
Tanja Fajon, the foreign minister, declared the pair’s personae non-gratae on Thursday, citing a first for a member state of the European Union.
She said, “We are innovating.”
The Slovenian government accused Israel’s Ben-Gvir and Smotrich of using “their genocidal statements” to incite “extreme violence and serious violations of Palestinian human rights.”
Both cabinet ministers “publicly support the forced eviction of Palestinians, the expansion of illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank, and the call for violence against the civilian Palestinian population,” the statement continued.
The Israeli government didn’t immediately respond.
For their hard-line stance on the occupied West Bank and the expansion of illegal settlements, Ben-Gvir and Smotrich, two key coalition partners in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s administration, have received international criticism.
Smotrich, who resides in a settlement in the West Bank, has urged the territory’s annexation and support for the expansion of settlements.
International law prohibits settlements. Israel has disputed the International Court of Justice’s ruling from July that Israel’s continued presence in occupied Palestinian territory is unlawful.
Smotrich has previously called for “total annihilation” in Gaza and recommended the destruction of a Palestinian town in the West Bank. Ben-Gvir had a sincere rebuke of Baruch Goldstein, an Israeli who killed 29 Palestinians in Hebron in 1994. Israeli courts have found him guilty of “incitement to racism” numerous times.
Netanyahu depends heavily on the two and their political parties’ support to keep his government together, despite the ministers’ positions.
Natasa Pirc Musar, Slovenia’s president, stated to the European Parliament on May 21 that Israel must “demonize the genocide” in Gaza.
After EU and foreign ministers did not agree on a joint action against Israel over allegations of human rights violations, Fajon stated that Slovenia and Slovenia had decided to take the action at a meeting in Brussels on Tuesday.
Without going into specifics, she claimed that other measures were being developed.
The two Israeli ministers were accused of inciting violence against Palestinians by the governments of Norway, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada in June.
Source: Aljazeera
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