Sanctioned for Driving Palestinians Off Their Land
Canada adds West Bank settler violence to its sanctions list as a “grave breach of international peace and security”
The order came into force the day the Gazette was printed. June 17, 2026. No press conference, no prime-time announcement. Just a statutory instrument buried inside 400 pages of federal regulation, carrying language the Governor in Council doesn’t reach for lightly.
“Whereas the Governor in Council is of the opinion that the actions of Israeli extremist settlers in the occupied Palestinian territories constitute a grave breach of international peace and security that has resulted in or is likely to result in a serious international crisis...”
That phrase, “grave breach of international peace and security,” is the legal trigger for the Special Economic Measures Act. Canada has used it before: against Russia after the invasion of Ukraine, against Belarus, against Myanmar after the coup. It is the government’s sharpest diplomatic tool short of severing relations. On June 17, it was deployed against individuals and entities connected to extremist settler violence in the West Bank.
Privy Council Order P.C. 2026-549, registered under the Special Economic Measures (Extremist Settler Violence) Regulations, adds new names and entities to Canada’s sanctions list. Anyone in Canada, and any Canadian abroad, is now prohibited from dealing in the property of the designated persons, entering into transactions with them, or providing them any services. The listed individuals also become inadmissible to Canada under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.
What the Gazette says drove the designation
The Regulatory Impact Analysis Statement attached to P.C. 2026-549 traces the escalation to October 7, 2023. In the period following the Hamas terrorist attacks against Israel, settler violence in the West Bank increased sharply. The situation, the RIAS records, worsened again on February 28, 2026, with the onset of what the document describes as the “United States, Israel and Iran war.”
The regulatory record describes forced displacement of Palestinians in the West Bank as a direct consequence of that violence. It does not characterize the settler actions as isolated incidents. The RIAS frames them as a pattern serious enough to meet the threshold for SEMA invocation.
Canada’s use of SEMA for West Bank settler violence is not entirely without precedent in Canadian regulatory history. The Special Economic Measures (Extremist Settler Violence) Regulations themselves predate this order, meaning a legal framework was already in place. P.C. 2026-549 expands the list within that existing structure.
A Gazette issue shaped by two wars
The June 17 edition of the Canada Gazette, Part II reads in part like a ledger of the costs those two wars have imposed on federal policy.
Elsewhere in the same issue, the Ukraine Goods Remission Order is extended. The order provides customs duty relief for Ukrainian goods. Its stated rationale is direct: “The Russian Federation, with support from Belarus, continues to violate the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine. In addition to the devastating impacts on Ukraine’s population and infrastructure, Russia’s unprovoked and unjustifiable invasion has significantly harmed Ukraine’s economy.” The extension runs from the original start date of June 9, 2022 through June 9, 2027.
That a single Gazette issue extends Ukrainian duty relief and simultaneously invokes SEMA against West Bank settler violence reflects a federal regulatory apparatus that is, in an understated way, doing two different kinds of geopolitical work at once. Neither measure is loud. Neither generated significant news coverage on the day. They sit inside the same volume of the official register, alongside amended turkey marketing quotas and a reissued rule on offshore petroleum venting.
The bureaucratic company they keep
That flatness is worth pausing on. P.C. 2026-549 appears in the same document as a remission order covering $196,047 in anti-dumping duties paid by a sugar importer, a rule change allowing Health Canada to extend expiration dates on certain drugs during supply crises, and a technical amendment suspending a water toxicity test for two gold mines in Nunavut.
The June 17 Gazette also contains an order remitting taxes for Alberta and Saskatchewan ranchers whose cattle were destroyed during bovine tuberculosis outbreaks between 2016 and 2019. More than 12,000 animals were killed under the Health of Animals Act, generating approximately $40 million in federal compensation. The ranchers had been waiting years for the tax treatment to be codified. It’s in the same issue.
That is how federal law actually works. The SEMA designation sits four paragraphs from a passport fee remission. The machinery doesn’t distinguish between the momentous and the administrative. It registers everything.
What happens to the listed persons
Under the Special Economic Measures Act, designation is immediate. There is no grace period. The order came into force on registration, before publication. Any assets in Canada are frozen. Any Canadian who deals with a designated person without authorization faces criminal liability. The designated individuals become inadmissible at the border.
The Extremist Settler Violence framework was established specifically to address the West Bank situation. P.C. 2026-549 adds to it. The Gazette does not publish the names of designated persons in the RIAS text provided in the source material, but the order itself is on the official registry and the legal effect is in force as of the date of publication.
What the record does publish is the standard of proof the government says it applied. The Governor in Council, Canada’s cabinet exercising royal prerogative, concluded that the designated actions constitute a “grave breach” and that a “serious international crisis” has resulted or is likely to result. That language is not boilerplate. It is a legal threshold with consequences attached.
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Source Documents
Government of Canada. (2026, June 17). Canada Gazette, Part II, Vol. 160, No. 12, including P.C. 2026-549, Special Economic Measures (Extremist Settler Violence) Regulations; Ukraine Goods Remission Order; and associated Regulatory Impact Analysis Statements. Canada Gazette Part II, 160(12).