Israel bars two Swedish MEPs from West Bank visit

Israel said Monday that it had refused entry to two outspoken left-wing Swedish deputies in the European Parliament who wanted to visit the occupied West Bank.

Jonas Sjostedt and Hanna Gedin, members of Sweden's Left Party, were turned away Sunday at Israel's Ben Gurion Airport, the primary gateway for visitors to the Palestinian territory.

Israel's foreign ministry said the pair had "consistently acted against Israel", including by calling for international legal proceedings against Israelis.

"On various public occasions, they have spread false accusations against Israel, including allegations of genocide, deliberate starvation and the intentional targeting of children and medical personnel," the ministry said in a statement.

United Nations investigators, who do not speak for the global body as a whole, charged in June that Israel was deliberately targeting Palestinian children in an ongoing "genocide" in Gaza.

Israel fiercely rejected the finding and accused Hamas of using Palestinian children as human shields.

Sjostedt in a Facebook post said that the two MEPs planned to meet human rights and charitable organisations, including Save the Children, and to see refugee camps.

"We continue to work against Israel's illegal occupation, the displacement of Palestinians, and genocide," Sjostedt wrote.

He added that Sweden had issued a protest.

But Swedish Foreign Minister Maria Malmer Stenergard, while noting the Swedish embassy assisted the pair, said that every country "has its own entry regulations" and that Sweden has a travel advisory in place for Israel and the Palestinian territories.

"Why Jonas Sjostedt and Hanna Gedin nevertheless choose to travel there is something they themselves need to answer," she told the Dagens Nyheter newspaper.

Rawhi Fattouh, president of the Palestinian National Council, the West Bank-based legislative body, called on European parliaments to speak out against the exclusion of critical voices.

The denial of entry is "an attempt to impose silence by force and turn criticism of the occupation into an accusation, in clear disregard for international law and the moral immunity afforded to parliamentary work", he said.

Israel regularly allows in foreign lawmakers, but in a high-profile exception in 2019 it denied entry to two US Democratic congresswomen highly critical of Israel, Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar.