NEW YORK - US President Joe Biden signed an executive order Thursday placing sanctions against Jewish extremists who attack innocent Palestinians in the West Bank, warning that such actions help destabilize the Middle East.
“I find that the situation in the West Bank – in particular high levels of extremist settler violence, forced displacement of people and villages, and property destruction – has reached intolerable levels and constitutes a serious threat to the peace, security, and stability of the West Bank and Gaza, Israel, and the broader Middle East region,” the order reads.
Biden’s order establishes a system for imposing financial sanctions and visa restrictions against individuals who are found to have attacked or intimidated Palestinians or seized their property, two senior Biden administration officials told reporters.
US to Israel: Act against West Bank settler violence
The order continues, “These actions undermine the foreign policy objectives of the United States, including the viability of a two-state solution and ensuring Israelis and Palestinians can attain equal measures of security, prosperity, and freedom. They also undermine the security of Israel and have the potential to lead to broader regional destabilization across the Middle East, threatening United States personnel and interests. For these reasons, these actions constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States.”
National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said the executive order will allow the US to issue financial sanctions against those directing or participating in certain actions against civilians in the West Bank.
These actions include threats of violence against civilians, intimidating civilians to cause them to leave their homes, destroying or seizing property, or engaging in terrorist activity, Sullivan said.
He added that Biden has been clear that the US strongly supports Israel’s right to defend itself following October 7, however, the president has also spoken out about his concern at the rise of extremist violence in the West Bank.
Sullivan said the order seeks to promote peace and security for Israelis and Palestinians alike.
United Nations figures show that daily settler attacks have more than doubled in the nearly four months since the Hamas attack and Israel’s ensuing assault on the Hamas-run Gaza Strip.
The order freezes any US assets of those targeted and generally bars Americans from dealing with them. The State Department on Thursday also planned to announce the first four individuals hit by the order, the officials said.
Biden and other senior US officials have warned repeatedly that Israel must act to stop violence by Israeli settlers against Palestinians in the West Bank.
“These actions pose a grave threat to peace, security, stability in the West Bank, Israel, and the Middle East region, and they also obstruct the realization of ultimately an independent Palestinian state existing side by side with the state of Israel,” one of the senior officials said.
Biden has raised the issue directly with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the official said, as he seeks a path to a two-state solution once the Gaza conflict ends.
The West Bank, in which Palestinians seek statehood alongside Gaza, has experienced a surge of violence in recent months amid expanding Jewish settlements and a nearly decade-old impasse in US-sponsored peacemaking.
Smotrich brands 'settler violence campaign' as 'antisemitic lie'
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, head of the far-right pro-settlement party Religious Zionism, was defiant in a statement on the Biden order:
“The ‘settler violence’ campaign is an antisemitic lie that enemies of Israel disseminate to smear the pioneering settlers and settlement enterprise, and to harm them and thus smear the entire State of Israel,” Smotrich said.
In December, the United States began imposing visa bans on people involved in violence in the West Bank.
An Israeli government spokesman said in December that the country condemns any vigilantism, hooliganism or attempts by individuals to take the law into their own hands.
The Prime Minister's Office reacted to the sanctions on Thursday, writing that "most settlers in the West Bank are law-abiding citizens, many of which fighting to defend Israel as we speak.
"Israel works against all those who break the law. Therefore, there is no need for extraordinary measures to be taken."
National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir reacted to the sanctions, urging US officials to "rethink" its position on the West Bank.
"President Biden is wrong about the citizens of the State of Israel and the heroic settlers. Those who are attacked, those who are pelted with stones in an attempt to hurt and murder them, are the heroic settlers in Judea and Samaria," he stated.