Sanctioned by US, activists who tried to block aid to Gaza change course
Leaders of Tzav 9, which has attacked humanitarian supply convoys headed to Strip, say their focus shifted from ‘field activity’ to political efforts to influence war policy
For months after the Hamas attacks of October 7, right-wing activists made headlines for blocking aid convoys on their way to the Gaza Strip. Organizers were tipped off as to routes and timing, organized protests, and even looted trucks full of provisions.
The Tzav 9 movement emerged from Facebook and WhatsApp groups that rallied their members to prevent the convoys from completing their deliveries.
In May, the phenomenon suddenly disappeared.
According to the Tzav 9 group, it had changed its approach in the face of growing violence in the protests. It was now focused on “diplomatic” efforts to urge the Israeli government to tighten its control of aid shipments to Palestinian civilians as the IDF fights Hamas in Gaza.
“We stopped [field activity] because we saw that when other organizations and people joined, it was going in a direction that was not good — we saw violence, and upheaval, and this is not the way,” Reut Ben Haim, a founder and leader of Tzav, 9 told The Times of Israel.
But US policy seems to have played a role as well.
Along with Tzav 9 leader Shlomo Serid, Ben Haim was added to the United States’ Office of Foreign Assets Control’s list of Specially Designated Nationals on July 15 — causing her assets to be blocked — as part of the Biden administration’s growing list of individuals sanctioned related to ongoing unrest in the West Bank.
On February 1, US President Joe Biden issued an executive order instructing his administration to impose sanctions on individuals and groups “undermining peace, security, and stability in the West Bank.” The US State Department designated Tzav 9 as such a group in a June 14 statement.
“For months, individuals from Tzav 9 have repeatedly sought to thwart the delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza, including by blockading roads, sometimes violently, along their route from Jordan to Gaza, including in the West Bank,” the statement said.
The announcement cited a May 13 incident in which activists affiliated with Tzav 9 looted and later set fire to two trucks near Hebron in the West Bank carrying humanitarian aid destined for Gaza. The police arrested four individuals associated with the initial looting. Tzav 9 claimed credit for blocking the convoy as it passed through the Tarqumiyah checkpoint in the Hebron Hills.
But, according to Ben Haim and Serid, the collective’s May 13 action was the last of its kind.
The two leaders maintain that the organization, which has ties to families of Hamas-held hostages, army reservists and Israeli settlers in the West Bank, is nonviolent at its core and have tried to distance the group from the burning and looting that day.
“We understood as it went on, you need humanitarian aid. We just don’t want the aid to go to Hamas.
Insisting that the physical damage to the aid convoys was wrought by activists from other organizations, Tzav 9’s leaders are also resistant to calling the far-right activist collective an official “group.”
“Tzav 9 is an idea; it’s not a formal organization,” Serid told The Times of Israel.
Responding to a request for comment, a US State Department spokesperson wrote that the “ultimate goal” of the sanctions “is not to punish, but to bring about a positive change in behavior.” The spokesperson reiterated the department’s designation of Tsav 9 as a violent extremist group.
After the May 13 action, which coincided with Israel’s Memorial Day for fallen soldiers, Tzav 9 organizers decided to cease their efforts to physically block aid-carrying vehicles, assessing that the violence accompanying their field activity was causing excessive harm, Ben Haim said.
Serid said that the group was troubled by its portrayal in the media as “aggressive,” which made their advocacy efforts less effective.
Rachel Touitou, a spokesperson for Tzav 9, said the group’s mission also shifted over time as Israel’s war to topple Hamas and free the hostages held by the terror group progressed. Initially, she said, the group advocated for withholding aid to the Strip as a means of pressuring Hamas into releasing the captives.
“But we understood as it went on, you need humanitarian aid,” Touitou said. “We just don’t want the aid to go to Hamas.”
Though there has not been a formal declaration of famine in Gaza, there have been repeated warnings from international groups that much of the Strip faced severe food shortages.
Alongside advocacy efforts to promote minimizing the flow of humanitarian aid through the Israeli government’s control, Tzav 9 leaders are now working to cope with the consequences of being sanctioned by the US.
Ben Haim, who regards the sanctions against her as an unfightable “punishment from above,” expressed dismay that she is being penalized for conduct that she insists is aligned with the US’s stated interest in the Israel-Hamas war.
Serid shared Ben Haim’s outrage over the sanctions, and said that Tzav 9 was interested in launching a campaign to urge the US to lift the sanctions against him, Ben Haim and the collective at large.
Eugene Kontorovich, a legal scholar who has been advising individual Tzav 9 members on matters relating to the American sanctions, told The Times of Israel that he expected to see the sanctions challenged in American courts on the grounds that they curtailed Israelis from nonviolent political expression.
Such legal challenges to sanctions are rare. Sanctions can be officially appealed only through a formal Office of Foreign Assets Control review process, and the president is given broad powers in levying such penalties.
On Tzav 9’s website, the organization still claims that its “flagship mission” is to block supply trucks from reaching Gaza. Ben Haim, Serid and Touitou all left open the possibility of the organization resuming its field activities in the future.
Ben Haim said that Tzav 9 encompasses around 15,000 people, but she believes there are actually many more affiliated individuals. Serid estimated that 300,000 people have supported or participated in actions affiliated with Tzav 9.
