Biden’s Sanctions Order Adds Fuel to Washington-Jerusalem Tensions Before Blinken Heads Back to Israel

Secretary Blinken will land in Israel this week as tensions between Israel and America are increasing, fueled in part by President Biden’s decision to order sanctions against four Israelis who are now banned from using their bank accounts. Sanctions leveled under a presidential executive order were announced last week by the Department of State, which cited the need to promote “peace, security, and stability in the West Bank.” Its release referred to “acts or threats of violence against civilians, intimidating civilians to cause them to leave their homes, destroying or seizing property, or engaging in terrorist activity.”Mr. Biden’s order follows multiple warnings from American and other diplomats, as well as United Nations officials, about an “uptick” in settler violence against Palestinians since the start of the Gaza war. “Settler violence must stop,” the French foreign minister, Stéphane Séjourné, said Monday following meetings at Jerusalem and Ramallah. Yet, events connected to the accusations against three of the men on Washington’s sanctions list occurred months and years before the October 7 attacks. All three were accused of wrongdoing by Israeli authorities, but that wasn’t the case for the fourth man, Yinon Levy. The state department, nevertheless, says Mr. Levy “led a group of settlers who engaged in actions creating an atmosphere of fear in the West Bank.” “America never sanctions those who threaten violence and commit terrorism on the Palestinian side,” Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, the founder of an Israeli law firm specializing in terror-related lawsuits, Shurat Hadin, tells the Sun. “Why are there no sanctions against those who incite violence against Jews, like Mahmoud Abbas, Unrwa chief, or Imams in the mosques?”Israel has not asked the U.S. to list the four men, she notes, adding that the sanctions may undermine international trust in the Israeli justice system.“We urge the Israeli government to prevent and investigate settler violence and hold extremists who perpetrate it to account,” the American ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, told the Security Council on January 14. On that very day a Jerusalem court convicted the founder of the extremist Lehava group, Bentzy Gopstein, of incitement to terrorism, for which he will serve prison time.The men on Washington’s sanctions list, in contrast to the likes of Gopstein, are “small fish,” according to Israeli security officials monitoring settler violence in the West Bank.One, David Chai Hasdai, was arrested several times in the past, including for his role in last summer’s violent attacks against the Arab village of Huwara. Two others, Shalom Zicherman and Einan Tanjil, are accused of participating in clashes with Palestinian and Israeli left protesters in 2022. Neither of them are high on the list of dangerous activists of the Shabak unit monitoring Jewish terrorism. Mr. Levy, the owner of the Meitarim ranch near Hebron, told Israeli reporters on Monday that he received a call from his adviser at Bank Leumi, saying he would be blocked from using his accounts. Israel’s Postal Bank also blocked access to two other men on the list, while Bank Hapoalim warned a client to avoid using a credit card for transactions outside of the country.The Israeli equivalent of the Federal Reserve, Israel Bank, expressed support for the financial institutions, reasoning that America could block their access to all international dollar-based transactions. However, the minister of the treasury, Betzalel Smotrich, vowed to use “all the tools in my power” to fight the Washington-forced freeze. “We are not a U.S. banana republic,” the far-right Mr. Smotrich, an ally of settlers in the West Bank, said. “These sanctions are against the state of Israel,” he added on X. “Today it’s four citizens, tomorrow it’s against half a million settlers, and two days later against the entire country.”Israelis suspect that Mr. Biden is turning on Israel to satisfy the Democratic left flank, which has criticized his support of Israel. Awkwardly, the White House leaked to Politico — and later denied — that behind closed doors the president has used an expletive when describing Prime Minister Netanyahu a “bad guy.” “I haven’t noticed any uptick in settler violence in Judea and Samaria since the war, and if there was any, the Israeli left wing would be up in arms,” a Palestinian watcher at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Yoni Ben Menachem, tells the Sun. “Biden is listening to Palestinian propaganda. He’s dreaming of a new Middle East, and he is concerned about the upcoming election.” With the sanctions, Mr. Biden seems to equate the vast majority of Gazans and West Bankers who cheered on Hamas’s October 7 massacres with a small minority of Israelis perpetrating violence. A few disappointed voters in key states, like Michigan and Pennsylvania, may cheer, but Mr. Blinken will likely encounter angry faces when he lands at Tel Aviv Thursday.

Biden’s Sanctions Order Adds Fuel to Washington-Jerusalem Tensions Before Blinken Heads Back to Israel

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