Last week, at passport control in Charles de Gaulle Airport, French authorities refused entry to Yossi Dagan, head of the Samaria Regional Council, a body of Israeli settlements in the northern West Bank. His office said so on Wednesday. The French Foreign Ministry confirms that Dagan is subject to an administrative ban from the territory.

The reason, in the ministry’s wording, is his active role in carrying out settlement policy in the West Bank. “Settlement building is contrary to international law and undermines the two-state solution,” the ministry said. France 24 notes that, asked by AFP, the ministry did not separately confirm the airport moment, but it did confirm the ban and the grounds for it.

Dagan, a member of Likud, said he was due to meet French elected officials and then fly on to the Czech Republic. An officer, he said, told him the decision dated from May or June and was tied to his post, to the building of settlements and to efforts to re-establish communities in the Gaza Strip, which Israel evacuated in 2005. Dagan says he answered that he was proud to build “the historic homeland of the Jewish people”. He was put on a flight back to Israel and later reached Prague. Those details are his account, carried by the Israeli press.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry called the step “completely unacceptable” and taken on political and ideological grounds. It said it would demand an explanation from the French government and then decide its next steps. This is not a conviction: it is an administrative ban on entry.

The case follows other friction on the same subject. In September France and 11 other countries said they intended to restrict trade with the settlements. On Monday a National Assembly committee approved a bill banning imports of goods and services tied to settlement construction; the plenary debate is set for 19 November. Earlier this year France barred ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich. The group Peace Now counts at least 148 settlements in the West Bank and 15 in East Jerusalem, home to about 750,000 Israelis.

Image: Wikimedia Commons — a jet bridge at Charles de Gaulle Airport, Roissy (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Sources consulted: Prominent Israeli settler denied entry into France — Al Jazeera; An Israeli settler official turned back on arrival in France — France 24; France bars settler leader Yossi Dagan over West Bank settlement activity — Ynet.