Israel has denied two Swedish Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) entry to the occupied territories over criticism of the Gaza genocide.
The Israeli Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Sunday that the regime’s top diplomat Gideon Sa’ar had asked the Population and Immigration Authority to deny entry to Jonas Sjöstedt and Hanna Gedin, both members of Sweden’s Left Party.
It added that the two lawmakers have “consistently acted against Israel” in recent years, including by “calling for the advancement of international legal proceedings against Israelis.”
Sjöstedt said on his Facebook page that the ban was due to the criticism of “Israel’s genocide in Gaza and bringing those responsible to international justice.”
Similarly, Gedin said she and Sjöstedt had been barred for political reasons because of their criticism of Israel and their calls for the regime’s ministers to be brought before the International Criminal Court (ICC).
The Tel Aviv regime “is afraid of our meetings with children who have experienced abuse and violence,” she added.
Gedin also noted that it is a big problem that critics of the Israeli far-right cabinet “are not allowed to speak, and that journalists, aid organizations and observers are not allowed into either Gaza or the occupied West Bank.”
The two MEPs planned to travel to the occupied West Bank and East al-Quds, where they were due to visit Palestinian refugee camps, hold talks with officials from the Palestinian Authority, and meet representatives of the NGO Save the Children, as well as Israeli and Palestinian human rights groups.
Rawhi Fattouh, president of the Palestinian National Council, condemned Israel’s move, calling it “an attempt to impose silence by force and turn criticism of the occupation into an accusation”.
The two Swedish MEPs are the latest foreign officials barred from travelling to the occupied lands amid Israel’s sweeping measures against critics of its genocidal war on the Gaza Strip.
Israel unleashed its Gaza genocide on October 7, 2023, after the Hamas resistance movement carried out a historic operation against the usurping entity in retaliation for the regime’s intensified atrocities against the Palestinian people.
Two years later, Israel accepted a Gaza ceasefire deal, following the failure to achieve its declared objectives of eliminating Hamas and freeing all captives.
Since then, however, the criminal regime has kept conducting attacks on Gaza in violation of the truce, killing at least 73,420 people and injuring 174,400 others in the besieged territory over the past almost three years.
