US sanctioning Israeli settler group over violence against Palestinians

The sanctions target the Amana settler group, which the Treasury Department describes as a “key part of the Israeli extremist settlement movement”.

The department announced the group also “maintains ties to various persons previously sanctioned by the US government and its partners for perpetrating violence in the West Bank”.

The sanctions will also target one of Amana’s subsidiaries, Binyanei Bar Amana, which the US said is a company that builds and sells homes in Israeli settlements and settler outposts.

The UK imposed sanctions on Amana last month.

The Joe Biden administration also announced sanctions on several individual Israeli settlers: Itamar Yehuda Levi; Eyal Hari; Shabtai Koshlevsky; and Zohar Sabah.

Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank are illegal under international law. However, Israel has continued to build settlements across the occupied territory over the past several decades. The settlement infrastructure, which has carved out lands which only Israeli citizens are allowed to access, has been described by several human rights groups as a system of apartheid.

In recent months, the Biden administration has announced several rounds of sanctions targeting individual Israeli settlers and settler organisations operating in the West Bank. All of the sanctions have been tied to settler violence against Palestinians living in the West Bank.

Israeli settler violence against Palestinians has been on the rise for several years now. Since Israel began its war on Gaza last October, the attacks in the occupied West Bank have spiked even more.

A report last month from the International Crisis Group found that there had been 1,000 such settler attacks since October 2023, which have led to 1,300 Palestinians being forced out of their homes.

While the US has imposed some sanctions on settler groups, human rights groups have long called on Washington to impose punishments on the leadership of these settlements and Israeli government officials involved in settlement activity.

Meanwhile, within the United States, there have been several Israeli real estate events in recent months advertising properties located in settlements in the occupied West Bank. These events have drawn significant backlash from members of those communities and pro-Palestinian activists.

And with the incoming administration of Donald Trump, it’s unclear how effective these sanctions will be.

The previous Donald Trump administration had deemed Israel’s settlements as not “inconsistent with international law”. President-elect Trump has also recently appointed real estate tycoon Steven Witcoff as his pick for Middle East envoy.