Governments announce their convictions in ministries, in communiqués, at podiums in New York. They act on them somewhere much smaller: a passport booth, an officer, a phone call, a short walk to another room. That is where a declaration turns into a door that stays shut.
Last week, at a Paris airport, the door stayed shut for Yossi Dagan. The head of the organisation that represents illegal Israeli settlements in the northern occupied West Bank was taken aside at passport control, questioned, and told he was banned from French territory, as Al Jazeera reported. The reason, in the words of the French foreign ministry, was “his active role in implementing the settlement policy in the West Bank.” The ministry added one more sentence, which sums up decades of French doctrine: “Settlement building is contrary to international law and undermines the two-state solution.”
Dagan heads the Samaria Regional Council and belongs to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party. He waited until Wednesday to make the episode public.
An officer made some calls
His own account, given to Ynet, describes a quiet scene: “I landed at Charles de Gaulle and was supposed to fly from France to the Czech Republic... At the airport, an officer checked me, made some calls and asked me to accompany him to border police.” The officer, he said, told him the French had decided back in May or June to keep him out. He also said that Israel’s foreign ministry had asked him not to publicise what happened. He then went on to Prague, where he spent three days with senior Czech government officials and members of both houses of parliament.
The reports do not all agree. Ynet’s version has Dagan only passing through France. The broadcaster i24NEWS, citing his office, said he had come for meetings with elected French officials. The National placed the stop on Wednesday itself; most other outlets put it a week earlier.
“Political and ideological grounds”
Jerusalem answered in its usual register. The foreign ministry called the ban “completely unacceptable”, said it rested on “political and ideological grounds”, and warned: “Israel will demand an explanation from the French government and consider its next steps accordingly.”
A reflection, nothing more: states rarely object to borders being used as instruments of politics, only to finding themselves on the wrong side of someone else’s. Only last month Israel barred the leader of Britain’s Green Party after the party voted to declare Zionism racist.
Dagan, for his part, said he was undeterred, and proud to “build the historic homeland of the Jewish people.” “I am proud to be on the right side of history,” he said. His office said the French had cited his part in building 35 settlements in the northern West Bank and his promotion of a return of Jewish settlements to Gaza.
A lengthening list
He does not stand alone at the border. Earlier this year France barred two members of Netanyahu’s cabinet, the far-right ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, with whom Dagan is closely aligned. According to The National, Paris has banned 59 Israelis linked to the settler movement since 2024; Dagan’s name had never been announced. i24NEWS said it knew of no earlier case of a Western country directly barring the head of a West Bank regional council.
The bans are one front. Trade is another. In September France and 11 other countries announced that they intended to restrict trade with the settlements, which drew outrage from Israeli officials. On Monday a committee of the National Assembly approved a bill to ban imports of settlement goods and of services that contribute to settlement construction.
According to JNS, the bill passed the Committee on Economic Affairs after a heated debate. Its main sponsor is the Socialist leader Olivier Faure, and more than 100 deputies from eight political groups back it. It invokes France’s obligations under the International Court of Justice advisory opinion of July 19, 2024, extends to goods from the Golan Heights, and provides for fines and even prison terms for companies that break it. “This is in no way a general sanction against Israel,” Faure said; the aim, he said, is to “put an end to the financing” of “an illegal activity.”
The left and the centrist MoDem supported the text. President Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance party and the National Rally opposed it, the latter calling it an example of the left’s “obsession with Israel.” Sylvain Maillard, a deputy from Macron’s camp, objected to the inclusion of services, calling it “imprecise, it is disproportionate and it exposes one to the censures of the Constitutional Council.” The full Assembly takes up the bill on November 19, and to become law it must also clear the Senate, where the centre-right holds sway.
The arithmetic of the hills
Behind the airport and the committee room lies the ground itself. The Israeli watchdog Peace Now counts at least 148 illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank and 15 in occupied East Jerusalem, home now to about 750,000 Israelis. Their number has grown under Netanyahu’s government. Their builders still travel.
One of them, turned away at Charles de Gaulle, flew on to Prague, where ministers and lawmakers sat down with him for three days.