WASHINGTON — The Biden administration on Thursday imposed sanctions on three extremist Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank who are accused of harassing and attacking Palestinians to pressure them to leave their land.
Two farms that the settlers run were also targeted in the move, which is likely to increase already-heightened tensions between the U.S. and Israel over the Gaza war.
The announcement from the State Department and Treasury comes at a time of increasing friction between President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose far-right government has reacted angrily to previous sanctions imposed against West Bank settlers.
Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken have repeatedly raised concerns about a surge in settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank since Israel’s war on Hamas in the Gaza Strip began. Israel has said it is taking action against such attacks and argued that the sanctions are unnecessary.
Currently, nine people and their properties have been sanctioned under a new executive order targeting West Bank settlers, according to Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control database.
The immediate impact of Thursday’s sanctions was not clear: It is uncertain if any of the settlers or their farms have assets in U.S. jurisdictions. However, an earlier tranche of sanctions against settlers spooked Israeli banks that do business with them. The U.S. sanctions block the men and their outposts from using the U.S. financial system and bar American citizens from dealing with them.
Rights groups said that among dozens of violent settlers in the territory, the three named in the sanctions list Thursday were among the most dangerous.
“All three are hardcore leaders of settler violence,” said Dror Etkes, a veteran anti-occupation researcher.
Included in Thursday’s sanctions are settler Zvi Bar Yosef and his outpost, the Zvis Farm. Currently sanctioned in the U.K., Bar Yosef is accused of violence against Palestinians in the West Bank. He founded his outpost northwest of the Palestinian city of Ramallah in 2018, Etkes said.
Etkes noted that Bar Yosef was responsible for the “most brutal assaults I’ve ever heard about in terms of settler attacks.”
In August, Israeli media reported that Bar Yosef had kicked a Palestinian man in his mouth, knocking out four of his teeth, while Israeli soldiers looked on.
