[/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=]

ISRAELI SETTLEMENTS STAND IN THE WAY OF PEACE. BIDEN CAN DEFUND THEM
ALL  
[[link removed]]


 

Michael Schaeffer Omer-Man
February 12, 2024
Guardian
[[link removed]]


*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

_ If President Biden is serious about recognising Palestinian
statehood, he has powerful tools to pressure Israel in that direction.
Defunding the settlements would be a great first step. _

Sanctions are also not accountability measures; they are a diplomatic
tool for creating leverage in the pursuit of foreign policy goals,
NASA (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

 

Israel and its settlement enterprise are getting a crash course in
coercive diplomacy. In the first few hours and days after the Biden
Administration announced it was placing financial sanctions on four
extremist Israeli settlers, there was a bit of confusion in Israel
about what it all meant. Demonstrating the absurdity of the moment,
Israeli Finance Minister Betzalel Smotrich told
[[link removed]] fellow
parliamentarians that, “it is not possible for an Israeli citizen
with Israeli money in an Israeli bank to be deprived of rights and
assets due to an American order.”

Within a day, one of the sanctioned settlers, a violent extremist
named Yinon Levi who the Biden Administration said was involved in
forcing Palestinian communities off their land, had his personal and
business accounts frozen by Israel’s Bank Leumi. A state-owned bank
followed suit and froze the account of a second sanctioned settler.
The banks understood something the Israeli finance minister didn’t
seem to grasp — the United States is a very powerful country.

It’s true that putting financial sanctions on four individual
settlers is by itself, a woefully inadequate response to what the
President described as “an unusual and extraordinary threat to the
national security and foreign policy of the United States.” Those
sanctions, however, are arguably the softest of the economic weapons
created in the executive order. If the president ever wants to use the
full range of sanctions he signed into, it could very well defund the
entire Israeli settlement enterprise. However, because the Israeli
economy is in reality not at all distinct from the settler economy,
sanctions of that scale could force a reckoning for which Israelis are
entirely unprepared.

Biden’s executive order allows for sanctioning violent Israeli
settlers, but also those complicit in, or who plan or direct settler
violence — including soldiers who don’t enforce the law against
settlers. Human rights groups have long documented how Israeli
soldiers accompany and even participate in settler violence against
Palestinians, and the two groups often share the same objective of
forcibly displacing Palestinian communities. In the case of Yinon
Levi, one of the extremists sanctioned last week for using violence
and intimidation to drive Palestinians from their homes, the evidence
of the military’s role is fairly clear.

Nearly a week after Yinon Levi was sanctioned for his role in forcible
displacement, Levi’s wife, Sapir, stated: “Every time there is a
problem in the area with Arabs, we call the army and they come and
they do what they do. We have the full backup of the army […] If
Biden has a complaint to us, he can talk to the army.”

One day later, Israeli public broadcaster Kan 11 News reported that
the United States is preparing to add IDF officers to the sanctions
list. If the Israeli Military Advocate General does not provide the
State Department with satisfactory answers to its queries about
military involvement in sanctionable activity within 60 days, the
report stated, it will add IDF commanders to the sanctions list.

The executive order also includes sanctions for entities, including
Israeli state entities, that engage in or whose leaders engage in
violence against Palestinian civilians.

Already included in the first round of sanctions was David Chai
Chasdai, who as previously arrested and then put in administrative
detention for his role in leading a pogrom
[[link removed]] last
year in Huwarra, which left one Palestinian man dead and torched 36
homes.

Israeli Finance Minister Smotrich got into hot water last year when,
just a few hours before settlers set out on that pogrom, he liked a
tweet that said, “Erase Huwarra.” The author of the tweet was
David Ben Zion, deputy head of the Samaria Regional Council, a
governing body of 35 Israeli settlements in the northern West Bank,
notably including those that surround the village of Huwara. Ben Zion,
is also a board member of the Jewish National Fund, which plays an
active role taking over Palestinian land for the benefit of Israeli
settlers. Sanctioning Ben Zion could easily open the door to sanctions
against the entire Samaria Regional Council, jeopardizing funding for
35 settlements, and perhaps even the JNF.

The executive order also allows for sanctions on any person or entity
providing material support or services to a sanctioned individual. For
instance, a crowdfunding campaign
[[link removed]] to
replace the funds frozen due to US sanctions, like the one launched by
an Israeli NGO called the Har Hevron Fund, is expressly prohibited.
Likewise, even facilitating the transfer of funds, like Israeli Bank
Hapoalim, credit card processor PeleCard, and crowdfunding site
GiveChak are doing, is grounds for being put on the sanctions list.

Far more consequential is the simple fact that Israeli banks give
mortgages to Israeli settlers, including some of the most violent and
extremist ones. Israeli communications companies install cellular
antennas on Palestinian land to provide service to settlers, and in
some cases even pay rent to Israeli settlers for the use of that land.
What will Israeli banks do if they conclude it is too risky to
continue servicing those loans? What about utility companies like the
Israel Electric Company, which services remote Israeli settlements as
well as major Israeli cities? Can it continue to bill sanctioned
individuals? Can it even continue to provide them electricity without
being accused of providing material support?

Taking things even further, the Department of Treasury’s financial
crimes unit sent an alert
[[link removed]] to
16,000 financial institutions designed to ensnare the flow of funds to
the entire settler ecosystem. The alert orders banks to actively look
for and report transactions with organizations linked to violent
extremist groups in the West Bank — or entities that list even a
founder who was previously associated with West Bank extremist groups.

That might include Shurat HaDin — Israel Law Center, a hegemon in
the Israeli lawfare space. Co-founder Nitsana Darshan-Leitner,
according to a 2007 leaked State Department cable
[[link removed]], told
US diplomats “that in many of her cases she receives evidence from
[Israeli government] officials, and added that in its early years
[Israel Law Center] took direction from the [Israeli government] on
which cases to pursue.” The same cable noted that Darshan-Leitner
co-founded the organization with her husband, Aviel Leitner. Aviel,
formerly Craig, was convicted in Israel of participating in a shooting
attack against a Palestinian bus in the occupied West Bank.

It might also include Regavim, the settler organization co-founded by
Israeli Finance Minister Betzalel Smotrich to assist and encourage
Israeli authorities to forcibly displace Palestinian communities in
the West Bank. In 2023, the first year Smotrich was given control over
the Israeli military government of the West Bank, the number of
Israeli demolitions rose to the highest on record in at least 13
years.

Sanctions are so brutal and extraordinary because they are so
antithetical to the very idea of due process — the government can
seize assets without anyone ever being charged with a crime. For that
reason, sanctions are also not accountability measures; they are a
diplomatic tool for creating leverage in the pursuit of foreign policy
goals.

One of the foreign policy objectives listed in Biden’s executive
order includes ensuring “the viability of a two-state solution and
ensuring Israelis and Palestinians can attain equal measures of
security, prosperity, and freedom.” But is not individual violent
settlers who stand in the way of Palestinian security, prosperity, and
freedom — Israeli settlements and the systems of apartheid and
occupation they breed are responsible for that.

The Biden Administration has been floating the idea of recognizing
Palestinians statehood as an immovable paving stone in a path that
eventually leads to a two-state solution. If the president is serious
about that, defunding the settlements would be a great first step. If
not, it will be a sign that the executive order was for domestic
political consumption.

_Michael Schaeffer Omer-Man is the director of research for
Israel-Palestine at Democracy for the Arab World Now (Dawn). He worked
as a journalist in Israel-Palestine for over a decade, including as
editor-in-chief of +972 Magazine_

_Scroll less and understand more about the subjects you care about
with the Guardian's brilliant email newsletters
[[link removed]], free to your inbox._

* Israel
[[link removed]]
* West Bank
[[link removed]]
* Jewish settlements
[[link removed]]
* Sanctions
[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

 

 

 

INTERPRET THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT

 

 

Submit via web
[/contact/submit_to_xxxxxx?utm_medium=email&utm_source=]
Submit via email
Frequently asked questions [/faq?utm_medium=email&utm_source=]
Manage subscription [/subscribe?utm_medium=email&utm_source=]
Visit xxxxxx.org [/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=]

Twitter [[link removed]]

Facebook [[link removed]]

 




[link removed]

To unsubscribe, click the following link:
[link removed]