UK targets top Israeli settlement development group in third batch of sanctions
Other sanctioned organizations include a West Bank yeshiva allegedly promoting ‘violence against non-Jewish people,’ a registered charity, and three illegal outposts
Britain sanctioned Israeli settler organizations Tuesday that it said have sponsored violence against Palestinian communities in the West Bank, and called on Israel to “stop settler expansion on Palestinian land.”
The sanctions targeted three settler outposts and four organizations involved in “facilitating, inciting, promoting or providing support” for activity that amounts to a serious abuse of the human rights of Palestinians, Britain said.
Among the sanctioned organizations is Amana, the settlement movement’s development arm and the most prominent Israeli development organization in the West Bank.
In a statement published online, the UK Foreign Office said that Amana “has overseen the establishment of illegal outposts and provides funding and other economic resources for Israeli settlers involved in threatening and perpetrating acts of aggression and violence against Palestinian communities in the West Bank.”
The organization was sanctioned by Canada in June, and US officials have told The Times of Israel that the Biden administration is considering the step as well.
A second organization on the list, Hashomer Yosh, was sanctioned by the US in August.
“Hashomer Yosh is a non-governmental organization that provides volunteers for illegal outposts, including Meitarim Outpost,” the UK Foreign Office said.
Volunteers from the organization were said by the US State Department to have fenced off a village earlier this year to prevent the return of 250 Palestinian residents who had been forced to leave.
Meitarim is one of three settlement outposts sanctioned by Britain on Tuesday, along with Tirza Valley Farm and Shuvi Eretz.
Tirza Valley Farm founder Moshe Sharvit and Meitarim founder Yinon Levi were sanctioned by the UK back in February.
Organizations Od Yosef Chai Yeshiva and Torat Lechima were also added to the UK sanction list Tuesday.
Od Yosef Chai Yeshiva “is a religious school embedded in the Yitzhar settlement known to promote violence against non-Jewish people,” the Foreign Office said. The school’s founder Yitzchak Ginsburgh was charged with incitement to racism in 2003, and in 2017, one of its senior rabbis Yosef Elitzur was indicted on charges of incitement to violence.
Elitzur is best known for his book “Torat Hamelech” in which he suggested that Jewish law permits killing non-Jews in certain circumstances.
Torat Lechima, said the Foreign Office, is a registered Israeli charity that “has been documented as providing financial support to illegal settler outposts linked with acts of violence against Palestinian communities in the West Bank.”
While the international community considers all settlements illegal, Israel differentiates between settlement homes built and permitted by the Defense Ministry on land owned by the state, and illegal outposts built without the necessary permits, often on private Palestinian land.
Outpost residents have often been cited as perpetrators of attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank, which are very rarely prosecuted by Israel and have led to sanctions by Western countries over the past year.
“The inaction of the Israeli government has allowed an environment of impunity to flourish where settler violence has been allowed to increase unchecked,” British foreign minister David Lammy said, noting settlers had also targeted schools and families with young children.
“The Israeli government must crack down on settler violence and stop settler expansion on Palestinian land,” he added.
The latest sanctions, which impose asset freezes on the organizations, represent the third set of measures against persons involved in settler violence in the West Bank, Britain said.
Settlement expansion has for decades been among the most contentious issues between Israel, the Palestinians and the international community.
The UK announcement came after former foreign secretary David Cameron said the previous Conservative government had planned to sanction two “extremist” Israeli ministers.
Cameron told the BBC that he had been “working up” sanctions against Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir before the UK’s general election in July.
Similar plans were said to have been in the works in the US at the time but were ultimately shelved.
Settler violence spiked after the October 7, 2023, massacre carried out by the Hamas terror group in southern Israel, but watchdogs say that it was already on the rise before then.
In the first eight months of 2023, before the Hamas terror assault and the start of the war in Gaza, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs recorded, on average, three settler-related incidents per day. This was compared to the two-per-day average in 2022, which at the time was the highest rate since the beginning of record-keeping in 2006.
Since October 7, troops have arrested more than 5,250 wanted Palestinians across the West Bank, including more than 2,050 affiliated with Hamas.
According to the Palestinian Authority health ministry, more than 716 West Bank Palestinians have been killed in that time. The IDF says the vast majority of them were gunmen killed in exchanges of fire, rioters who clashed with troops or terrorists carrying out attacks.
During the same period, 42 people, including Israeli security personnel, have been killed in terror attacks in Israel and the West Bank. Another six members of the security forces were killed in clashes with terror operatives in the West Bank.
