Biden issues more Israeli settler sanctions ahead of Trump term

US President Joe Biden’s administration 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 targeted the settlement development organisation Amana, as well as its subsidiary Binyanei Bar Amana Ltd.

Amana is a “key part of the Israeli extremist settlement movement” and supports settlements and farms in the occupied West Bank “from which in turn settlers commit violence”, the US Treasury Department said.

At the same time, the US State Department also sanctioned three individuals and a third organisation for their “roles in violence targeting civilians or in the destruction or dispossession of property” in the West Bank.

They included Shabtai Koshlevsky, the vice president and co-founder of Hashomer Yosh, an Israeli group already under US sanctions, and Zohar Sabah, who the State Department said has “engaged in threats and acts of violence against Palestinians, including in their homes”.

Sabah was also involved in an attack on Palestinian students and teachers at the Arab al-Kaabneh Primary School near Jericho in September, the department said.

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 hold accountable those responsible for it”.

“But, as we have also made clear, in the absence of such actions by the government of Israel, we will continue to take our own steps to hold those responsible for violent extremism accountable,” Miller told reporters on Monday afternoon.

He added that the Biden administration has sanctioned 33 individuals and entities over the last 10 months.

The sanctions come amid a spike 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 called on Biden to sanction Israeli settlement groups over the attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank, many also have stressed that the curbs do not go far enough because the settlements are backed by the Israeli government itself.

Last week, dozens of US lawmakers urged the Biden administration to sanction members of the Israeli government, including far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, for their roles in the violence.

“With radical officials in the Netanyahu government continuing to enable settler violence and enact annexationist policies, it is clear that further sanctions are urgently needed,” they wrote in a letter to Biden.

“The key individuals and entities that are destabilizing the West Bank – thereby also threatening the security of Israel and the broader region, and US national security as well – should be directly held accountable.”

The US provides Israel with at least $3.8bn in military aid annually, and the Biden administration has authorised $14bn in further assistance to its ally since the Israeli military began its war on the Gaza Strip.

I'm urging President Biden to sanction high-ranking members of the Netanyahu government most responsible for the unacceptable rise in settler violence against Palestinians, settlement expansion, and destabilizing activity in the West Bank. pic.twitter.com/ZL7kabOaMb

— Rep. Sean Casten (@RepCasten) November 18, 2024

Monday’s sanctions, which freeze the targeted groups’ and individuals’ assets in the US and block US citizens from conducting business with them, come in the final weeks of Biden’s time in the White House.

US President-elect Donald Trump — who will take office in January — has already signalled that he is likely to take a more permissive approach towards Israeli settlements, leading some observers to believe he could lift the Biden-era sanctions.

During Trump’s first term as US president in 2017-2021, his administration went back on the long-held US position that Israeli settlements in the West Bank were illegal. Biden later undid the reversal.

The Republican president-elect also recently selected former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee — a Christian evangelical who once said there is “no such thing as a West Bank” — as the US ambassador to Israel.

“It’s Judea and Samaria,” Huckabee said in 2017, referring to the biblical name of the territory regularly used by far-right Israeli officials and settlers.

“There’s no such thing as a settlement. They’re communities, they’re neighbourhoods, they’re cities. There’s no such thing as an occupation,” he said.

Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has tapped American-Israeli Yechiel Leiter – another staunch supporter of the settlements – to be Israel’s ambassador to the US when Trump takes office.

Israeli daily Haaretz reported that Leiter was a former member of the hardline ultranationalist Jewish Defense League, which has been linked to violent attacks on US soil and is designated as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Leiter’s appointment is “an indication of where Netanyahu’s going” with Trump set to enter the White House, Michael Omer-Man, director of Israel-Palestine research at the think tank Democracy for the Arab World Now, told Al Jazeera last week.

“We’re going to see a lot more of these signals,” he added. “The intention is to simply go way further than they did in the first Trump term.”