Extremist West Bank settlers, outposts hit with US sanctions

WASHINGTON — The Biden administration on Thursday announced sanctions on three Israelis and five entities it said are responsible for violence that has displaced Palestinians from their communities in the West Bank. 

The targets include Lehava, a right-wing Jewish supremacist group that opposes marriage between Jews and non-Jews. Its leader, Ben Zion Gopstein, is considered a close confidant of Israel’s ultranationalist national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, and was hit with US sanctions in April. 

The administration on Thursday also imposed sanctions on four unauthorized outposts — Manne Farm, Meitarim Farm, Hamahoch Farm and Neriya’s Farm.  

The establishment of Neriya’s Farm has prevented Palestinian farmers from using their fields, the State Department said in a release unveiling the sanctions. Settlers at the outpost have reportedly destroyed crops, threatened Palestinian residents and blocked Palestinians’ access to pasturage and water sources. 

Manne Farm was established in 2020 on pastureland in the South Hebron Hills belonging to Palestinians who are regularly attacked by settlers from the outpost, the department said. 

The State Department also blacklisted Reut Ben Haim and Aviad Shlomo Sarid, the leaders and co-founders of Tzav 9. The Biden administration imposed sanctions on Tzav 9 last month over the extremist group’s monthslong campaign to thwart the delivery of humanitarian assistance destined for the Gaza Strip, including by blockading roads. 

The sanctions come amid an uptick in Israeli settler violence against West Bank Palestinians that the Biden administration fears plays into the hands of Hamas, whose militants killed 1,200 people and abducted some 250 others during the Oct. 7 attack in southern Israel. The latest measures follow President Joe Biden’s signing of an executive order on Feb. 1 that permits sanctions on extremist Jewish settlers, denying them access to the US financial system.

State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller called on the Israeli government to take “immediate steps” to hold the targets of Thursday’s sanctions accountable. 

“In the absence of such steps, we will continue to impose our own accountability measures,” Miller said in a statement. 

The Israeli government under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has accelerated West Bank settlement expansion — deemed illegal by most countries — which Palestinians say undermines their quest for statehood. Nearly 500,000 settlers live in the West Bank along with three million Palestinians.

In a joint statement Thursday, the foreign ministers from the Group of Seven, or G7, condemned Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s recent announcement that five outposts would be legalized in the West Bank. 

The ministers from the seven major democracies also slammed the Israeli government’s decision to expand existing settlements by 5,295 housing units, establish three new settlements in the West Bank and formally designate a huge swathe of land as “state property.” 

The settlement program is “inconsistent with international law, and counterproductive to the cause of peace,” the foreign ministers said. “We urge the government of Israel to reverse this decision.”

This developing story has been updated since initial publication.