The Biden administration on Thursday imposed sanctions on four Israeli men it accused of being involved in settler violence in the occupied West Bank, signalling growing US displeasure with the policies of Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu.
President Biden issued an executive order on Thursday that aims to punish Israeli settlers in the West Bank, where Palestinians envisage a future state.
The order establishes a system for imposing financial sanctions and visa restrictions against individuals who attack or intimidate Palestinians or seize their property, said White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan.
“Today’s actions seek to promote peace and security for Israelis and Palestinians alike,” he said.
United Nations figures show that daily settler attacks have more than doubled in the nearly four months since Palestinian Hamas militants on October 7th carried out an attack on Israel and Israel responded with an assault on the Hamas-run Gaza Strip.
The US state department sanctions freeze the US assets of the four men — David Chai Chasdai, Einan Tanjil, Shalom Zicherman and Yinon Levi — and generally bar Americans from dealing with them.
Mr Biden and other senior US officials have warned repeatedly that Israel must act to stop violence by Israeli settlers against Palestinians in the West Bank.
Mr Biden has raised the issue directly with Mr Netanyahu, said one senior official, as Mr Biden seeks a path to a two-state solution for Israel and the Palestinians once the Gaza conflict ends.
Mr Netanyahu, who heads a religious-rightist coalition, has resisted US entreaties to develop a plan for post-conflict Gaza and to embrace a peace deal that envisages Israeli and Palestinian states side by side.
His office on Thursday responded to the US steps by saying they were unnecessary.
“Israel takes action against all law-breakers everywhere and therefore there is no need for unusual measures on the issue,” it said.
The US administration has also approved plans for strikes in Iraq and Syria on targets including “Iranian personnel and facilities”, CBS News reported on Thursday, citing US officials.
The report follows days of conjecture about how Washington will retaliate after three US service members were killed on Saturday by a drone strike in Jordan, the first US deaths in an escalation of violence across Middle East flashpoints since Israel’s war in Gaza began in October.
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This week has been marked by an acceleration of diplomatic efforts to achieve a ceasefire in Gaza, even as fighting has intensified.
The violence began on October 7th when Hamas fighters attacked Israel, which claims 1,200 people were killed and 253 taken hostage. This precipitated an Israeli offensive that has laid waste to much of Gaza. Health officials in the enclave said on Thursday the confirmed death toll had risen above 27,000, with thousands more dead still lying under the rubble.
Qatari and Egyptian mediators presented Hamas this week with the first concrete proposal for an extended halt to fighting, agreed with Israel and the US at talks in Paris last week.
Hamas says it is studying the text. A Palestinian official close to the negotiations told Reuters that Hamas was unlikely to reject it outright, but would demand further guarantees that fighting would not resume.
“For the agreement to be signed,” said the official, on condition of anonymity, “it must ensure Israel will commit to ending the war in Gaza and pull out from the enclave completely”.
The Palestinian official said the Paris text envisages a first phase lasting 40 days, during which fighting would cease while Hamas freed remaining civilians among the more than 100 hostages it still holds. Further phases would mean the handover of Israeli soldiers and bodies of dead hostages.
The main disagreement appears to be over what would follow any truce. Mr Netanyahu has said he will not pull troops out until “total victory”, defined as eradicating Hamas.
A positive-sounding speech by a Qatari spokesman at Johns Hopkins University in Washington briefly triggered some celebrations in Gaza - and a drop in the price of crude oil.
But a Qatari official in Doha told Reuters there was no ceasefire deal yet, and that Hamas had “received the proposal positively” but not responded yet.
And Taher Al-Nono, media adviser to Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh, told Reuters: “We have received the proposal that was put together in Paris but we haven’t yet given a response to any of the parties.”
“We can’t say that the current stage of negotiation is zero and at the same time we can’t say that we have reached an agreement.”
Celebratory firing into the air and cheering in central and southern Gaza were soon suppressed by an air strike on a house in Gaza’s main southern city, Khan Younis, that wounded 13 people, according to hospital officials.
— Reuters