Biden signs executive order allowing him to sanction four settlers over violence
Jacob Magid is The Times of Israel's US bureau chief
US President Joe Biden has signed an executive order allowing him to implement new measures to combat settler violence, including sanctions that have been announced against four Israeli extremists who carried out acts of violence in the West Bank.
“This executive order will allow the United States to issue financial sanctions against those directing or participating in certain actions, including 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 in the West Bank,” US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan says in a statement that was issued in tandem with the notification of the measure that Biden sent to Congress.
The sanctions will block designated individuals from access to the US financial system, blocking them from any type of property in the US and freezing any property that they might already own. The sanctions will also include a ban on entry to the US.
The four individuals being designated in the first round of sanctions will be identified later today, says a senior administration official briefing reporters ahead of the announcement. One of them initiated and led the rampage of the northern West Bank village of Huwara last year, which resulted in the death of one of the Palestinian residents. Another designated individual assaulted a Palestinian farmer as well as Israeli activists assisting him in the West Bank. Another vandalized cars and intimidated Palestinians in the West Bank and the fourth individual assaulted Palestinian Bedouin civilians and threatened them with additional violence in addition to preventing them from leaving their homes and destroying their property, the senior US official says.
The text of the executive order states that the administration “find[s] 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 announcement follows visa restrictions that were announced in December by the US State Department against violent extremists in the West Bank. However, those sanctions did not include a financial component. The number of individuals designated and the identities of those individuals were also kept private.
“This is an important step to directly address the threats to US national security and regional security arising from extremist violence in the West Bank and underscores the extent to which the administration takes this threat seriously,” the senior US official says.
