Biden Admin Sanctions Israeli West Bank Settlers — But Not Leaders Arming Them

Advocates for Palestinian rights are criticizing the Biden administration after it announced that it is issuing sanctions against settler groups and individuals responsible for carrying out violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank — but is not meting out any punishment for the top Israeli officials who are organizing and funding the settler attacks.

On Monday, the Treasury Department announced that it is sanctioning Amana, which officials said is the largest company involved in settlement and outpost development in the occupied West Bank and plays a key role in the Israeli settlement movement.

Concurrently, the State Department announced that it is sanctioning three companies and individuals involved in building settlements or committing violence against Palestinians, including construction company Eyal Hari Yehuda and owner Itamar Yehuda Levi; Shabtai Koshlevsky, a leader of a group previously sanctioned for violent land theft; and Zohar Sabah, who has “engaged in threats and acts of violence against Palestinians,” including in an attack on an elementary school in September.

“The United States, along with our allies and partners, remains committed to holding accountable those who seek to facilitate these destabilizing activities, which threaten the stability of the West Bank, Israel, and the wider region,” said Deputy Secretary of the Treasury, Wally Adeyemo, in a statement.

The sanctions were carried out as part of a Biden executive order calling for sanctions on those threatening safety in the West Bank, as international bodies have said that Israel’s settlement movement in the West Bank violates international humanitarian law.

Though the sanctions may ease some of the fierce violence and repression faced by Palestinians in the West Bank, which Israelis have escalated amid the genocide in Gaza, advocates for Palestinian rights have said that the sanctions don’t go far enough in targeting the true source of Israel’s violence in West Bank.

Last week, 80 Democrats released a letter in which they urged the Biden administration to issue sanctions for those involved in settler violence, including organizations like Amana. They also pushed for sanctions on Israeli cabinet members like Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, two of the most extremist members of Israel’s government, who have been directing Israel’s plan to annex the occupied West Bank.

“Given their critical roles in driving policies that promote settler violence, weaken the Palestinian Authority, facilitate de facto and de jure annexation, and destabilize the West Bank, we urge you to sanction Finance Minister Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir,” the lawmakers wrote. “Government leaders instigating violence must be subject to U.S. sanctions; those in leadership responsible for the lawlessness must be held to account.”

Smotrich and Ben-Gvir are instrumental to Israeli violence in the West Bank. Smotrich is the engineer of the plan to annex the West Bank and just last week issued an order for preparations to annex the West Bank in anticipation of Donald Trump’s presidency. And Ben-Gvir’s ministry has purchased weapons to give to private settlement groups in order to continue their rampages across the region.

Lawmakers leading the letter effort said that they released it to the public because the Biden administration had not responded to their plea — which is now more urgent with the incoming Trump administration likely to rescind any sanctions against Israeli settlers.

Advocates said that Monday’s move means little without sanctions targeting the Israeli government leaders involved in fomenting violence.

“[Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu erases the West Bank from maps, Israeli ministers plan to annex it, the state supports violence against Palestinians — which [the administration] fail[s] to call ethnic cleansing — and you’re urging the people causing all this to take action against it?” said Middle East commentator and writer Assal Rad, in response to a State Department post supposedly urging Israel to ”take action against those causing human suffering” in the West Bank.

“These PR stunts aren’t fooling anyone,” Rad went on.