Britain, a former colonial power in today’s Israel, is orchestrating a multi-country campaign to impose unprecedented sanctions on two ministers of the Jerusalem cabinet. 

Prince Minister Starmer and allies, including Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, will impose travel bans and a freeze of assets against Israel’s finance minister, Betzalel Smotrich, and national security minister, Itamar Ben Gvir, the London Times reports. The two elected politicians are key members of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s coalition. 

Under growing anti-Israel sentiments in Britain, Mr. Starmer recently said he had consulted with allies about punishing the Jewish state, and “what more we can do, including questions of sanctions.” Israel’s foreign minister, Gideon Sa’ar, called the move “outrageous,” and even some of Mr. Netanyahu’s top competitors condemned the move. 

“I deeply disagree with Ministers Smotrich and Ben Gvir,” a leading Knesset opposition party leader, Benny Gantz, writes on X, “but the imposition of sanctions on ministers in the Israeli government by the British government is a profound moral failure and a bad message to the entire world.”

Israel, Mr. Gantz writes, is fighting a multi-front war against enemies that want it destroyed. “Pressure and sanctions should be directed at Iran, Hamas, and the Houthis,” he writes. “I call on the British government to stop this process that will fuel global terrorism.” 

The move could become a “snow avalanche,” a top diplomatic commentator on Kann News, Soleiman Maswadeh, said. Following Britain, top European countries, including France and Germany, could also impose sanctions.

Messrs. Smotrich and Ben Gvir are uncomfortable allies who compete over a slice of Israeli constituency that includes settlers in Judea and Samaria, where there are often clashes with Arabs. They also advocate for more aggressive measures in Gaza than the rest of Mr. Netanayhu’s cabinet and top military officials are ready to employ. Both have said they favored renewed Jewish settlement in Gaza after Israel dismantled the effort in 2005. 

“We survived Pharoah, we’ll survive Keir Starmer,” Mr. Ben Gvir wrote on his X account after the news broke Tuesday. “Boo to the White Paper,” he added — a reference to a 1939 British government policy document that reacted to anti-Jewish riots by Arabs in what was then British-mandated Palestine. The document shifted London’s policy by imposing limits on Jewish immigration from Europe on the eve of the Holocaust. 

Mr. Smotrich was at Mitzpe Ziv, a Jewish settlement near Hebron, when he heard the news of the pending sanctions against him. “While I am here, I heard that Britain has decided to impose sanctions on me due to the fact that I am thwarting the establishment of the Palestinian state,” he said. “There could be no better timing. Britain has already tried once to prevent us from settling the cradle of our homeland and we will not allow it again. We are determined to continue building.”