Biden admin sanctions Israeli West Bank settlement organization
By Jennifer Hansler, CNN
(CNN) — The Biden administration on Monday imposed sanctions on Israel’s largest settlement development organization as part of the latest US actions targeting those fomenting instability in the occupied West Bank.
The administration has issued a number of rounds of sanctions after President Joe Biden issued an executive order in February allowing sanctions on those undermining “peace, security, and stability in the West Bank.” The latest action comes amid a push from Democrats for Biden to act in his final months in office to impose sanctions on two far-right Israeli ministers – Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir – for their roles in inciting settler violence in the West Bank and as frustration grows from within Biden’s own party about his administration’s seeming unwillingness to penalize the Israeli government.
President-elect Donald Trump is unlikely to take any punitive actions against Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank – instead, his policies are likely to embrace them. His pick for US Ambassador to Israel, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, is staunchly pro-Israel and has voiced support for Israeli occupation in the Palestinian territory.
The sanctions from the US Treasury Department Monday hit Amana, “the largest organization involved in settlement and illegal outpost development in the West Bank” that has “established dozens of illegal settler outposts and directly engaged in dispossession of private land owned by Palestinians in its support of settlers,” according to the State Department.
The organization “maintains ties to various persons previously sanctioned by the U.S. government and its partners for perpetrating violence in the West Bank,” the Treasury Department said in a press release. The Treasury Department also sanctioned Amana’s subsidiary Binyanei Bar Amana Ltd., “a construction and development company that builds and sells homes in settlements and outposts in the West Bank.”
In a concurrent action, the US State Department imposed sanctions on three companies and three people “for their roles in violence targeting civilians or in the destruction or dispossession of property.”
A group of nearly 90 congressional Democrats urged Biden in a late October letter to impose sanctions on Smotrich and Ben Gvir. They publicly released the letter last week in order to increase pressure on the administration.
The letter had also pushed for sanctions on Amana, which was sanctioned Monday.
CNN’s Lauren Izso contributed reporting.
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