Israel bars two Swedish MEPs, in a growing pattern of turning away EU officials
Refusal to let elected officials witness conditions in occupied territories has become recurring pattern
BRUSSELS (MNTV) — Israel is increasingly refusing entry to elected European officials seeking to witness conditions in the occupied Palestinian territories — a pattern underscored by the case of two Swedish members of the European Parliament who say they were turned away while attempting to travel there.
The left-wing MEPs Jonas Sjöstedt and Hanna Gedin, both of Sweden’s Left Party, said they were stopped as they prepared to board a flight from Athens to Tel Aviv, despite holding entry permits and supporting documentation.
They had intended to continue on to the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, where they were due to meet representatives of the NGO Save the Children, visit refugee camps, and speak with Israeli and Palestinian human rights groups.
Their aim, they said, was to hear testimony about deteriorating conditions and what they described as apartheid in the West Bank.
Sjöstedt said the pair had been barred for political reasons — because of their criticism of Israel and their calls for Israeli government ministers to be brought before the International Criminal Court.
“Israel is increasingly preventing people from entering the country, even members of parliament,” he said in a statement.
Gedin argued that it was unacceptable for Israel to prevent elected European officials from seeing conditions on the ground and meeting those affected, while Israeli politicians continued to travel freely across Europe.
The point they raise reflects a broader and hardening trend.
Over the past two years, Israel has repeatedly denied entry to European parliamentarians, ministers and delegations attempting to visit the occupied territories, turning what were once routine fact-finding missions into diplomatic flashpoints.
The Left group in the European Parliament said it had informed the office of the parliament’s president about the incident, describing the refusal of entry as an attack on the institutions of the EU itself.
The episode also feeds into wider European unease over the bloc’s relationship with Israel.
It comes amid controversy over negotiations by the European Commission on the sharing of biometric and personal data with Israeli security services — talks that the Commission’s own legal advisers had warned could breach international law — and amid persistent criticism that Europe has failed to translate its stated concerns about Gaza into meaningful action.
Those concerns remain acute.
Israel continues to block agreed quantities of food, medicine, medical supplies and shelter materials from entering Gaza, where around 2.4 million Palestinians live — including some 2.15 million displaced people — under conditions aid agencies describe as catastrophic. Repeated Israeli violations of the ceasefire have, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, killed 1,286 Palestinians and injured 4,257 more.
The ministry says the overall death toll from Israel’s genocide in Gaza since October 2023 has risen above 73,000, with more than 174,000 wounded.
For the European Parliament’s Left group, the barring of two of its members is not an isolated affront but part of that same picture: a pattern in which those seeking to document the reality of the occupation are, with growing frequency, simply denied the chance to see it.
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