The administration of US President Joe Biden has issued a new round of sanctions against groups and individuals involved in illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, as the United States continues to provide unwavering support for Israel’s Gaza war.
The US sanctions announced on Monday also target settlement development organization Amana as well as its subsidiary Binyanyi Bar Amana Ltd.
The US Treasury Department said Amana is a “significant part of the Israeli extremist settlement movement” and supports settlements and farms in the occupied West Bank “from which settlers perpetrate violence”.
Additionally, the US State Department also sanctioned three individuals and a third organization for their “role in violence targeting civilians or in the destruction or dispossession of property” in the West Bank.
They include Shabtai Koshlewski, vice president and co-founder of Hashomer Yosh, an Israeli group already under US sanctions, and Zohar Saba, whom the State Department has said is involved in “threats and acts of violence against Palestinians.” including their homes”. ,
The department said Sabah was also involved in an attack on Palestinian students and teachers at the Arab al-Qabneh primary school near Jericho in September.
State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said Biden and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken “have repeatedly stressed with their Israeli counterparts that Israel must do more to stop violence against civilians in the West Bank.” And those responsible for this should be held accountable”.
“But, as we have also made clear, in the absence of such actions by the Government of Israel, we will continue our actions to hold accountable those responsible for violent extremism,” Miller told reporters Monday afternoon.
He said the Biden administration has imposed sanctions on 33 individuals and entities in the last 10 months.
The sanctions come amid a surge in Israeli settler violence in the occupied West Bank in the shadow of Israel’s war on Gaza, which has killed more than 43,900 Palestinians in the bombarded coastal enclave since October 2023.
While rights groups had met biden While sanctioning Israeli settlement groups over attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank, many have also stressed that the sanctions do not go far enough because the settlements themselves are supported by the Israeli government.
Last week, dozens of US lawmakers urged the Biden administration to impose sanctions on members of the Israeli government, including far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, for their role in the violence.
“With radical officials in the Netanyahu government continuing to perpetrate settler violence and implementing occupation policies, it is clear that further sanctions are urgently needed,” he has written In a letter to Biden.
“The key individuals and entities who are destabilizing the West Bank – thereby threatening the security of Israel and the broader region, as well as U.S. national security – must be held directly accountable.”
The US provides at least $3.8 billion in military aid to Israel annually, and the Biden administration has authorized $14 billion in additional aid to its ally since Israeli forces began the war on the Gaza Strip.
I am urging President Biden to impose sanctions on the high-ranking members of the Netanyahu government most responsible for the unacceptable increase in violence against Palestinians, settlement expansion, and destabilizing activity in the West Bank. pic.twitter.com/ZL7kabOaMb
– Rep. Shawn Casten (@RepCasten) 18 November 2024
Monday’s sanctions, which freeze assets of targeted groups and individuals in the US and bar US citizens from doing business with them, come in the final weeks of Biden’s tenure in the White House.
US President-elect Donald Trump – who will take office in January – has already signaled that he is likely to take a more liberal approach towards Israeli settlements, leading some observers to believe he would be more likely to adopt a Biden-era Restrictions can be removed.
During Trump’s first term as US President in 2017–2021, his administration returned to the long-standing US position that Israeli settlements in the West Bank were illegal. Biden later reversed course.
The Republican president-elect also recently chose former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee – an evangelical who once said “there is no such thing as a West Bank” – as US ambassador to Israel.
“This is Judea and Samaria,” Huckabee said in 2017, referring to the biblical name for the region regularly used by far-right Israeli officials and settlers.
“There is no such thing as compromise. They’re communities, they’re neighborhoods, they’re cities. There’s no such thing as business,” he said.
Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has chosen American-Israeli Yechiel Leiter, another staunch supporter of settlements, to become Israel’s ambassador to the US if Trump takes office.
The Israeli daily Haaretz reported that Leiter was a former member of the radical ultranationalist Jewish Defense League, which has been linked to violent attacks on American soil and has been designated as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Michael Omer-Man, director of Israel-Palestine research at the think tank Democracy for the Arab World Now, told Al Jazeera last week that Leiter’s appointment “is indicative of where Netanyahu is going” as Trump prepares to enter the White House. Are ready for.
“We’re going to see a lot more signals like this,” he said. “The intention is simply to go further than Trump’s first term.”
