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Just as the U.S. Congress was approving $26 billion in aid to Israel, the Biden administration announced that it would be sanctioning an entire Israeli army unit. This unprecedented move targeted an IDF unit operating in the occupied West Bank that is accused of human rights violations.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described the U.S. action as “absurd,” vowing to do whatever he could to oppose it. Other members of his coalition were more outspoken, denouncing the sanctions as an outright “anti-Semitic act”!
This is indeed unprecedented, and also a highly symbolic gesture. Called the Netza Yehuda Battalion, the unit is made up of ultra-Orthodox soldiers who grew up inside religious families, and operates in the Occupied Territories. This extremely homogeneous unit, founded in the late 1990s, has been guided by commanders who have declared their “holy mission in Judea-Samaria,” utilizing the biblical name for the West Bank.
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But its reputation is stained by scandal and abuse, including the death two years ago of Omar Abdalmajeed As’ad, an 80-year-old Palestinian who has dual American citizenship. The old man had been arrested at a military checkpoint, handcuffed and left in the cold until his death. His fate weighs heavily on the sanctions announced by the White House.
Blatant human rights violations
Washington’s measure, which has yet to be detailed, will principally shut off this unit from any American support. It’s mostly symbolic, but it’s worth noting that the U.S. has used the same Leahy Law, which was passed in the 1990s to combat human rights violations by paramilitary groups in Latin America. The fact that an IDF unit has been similarly categorized as a deadly militia speaks volumes about the criticism leveled at it, and about the humiliating nature of the measure.
It’s also a reflection of what’s going on in the West Bank, while attention is focused elsewhere — whether on Gaza or the confrontation with Iran. Americans and Europeans have raised concerns about the increasing violence of Jewish settlers, protected by the army, aimed against Palestinian civilians. Olive trees uprooted, houses and vehicles set on fire, and land confiscated by the Israeli administration. These sanctions are also aimed at this specific dynamic.
The credibility of a post-war political process depends on this.
The first sanctions taken by the United States, and joined by the Europeans, have so far targeted only a handful of particularly extremist settlers. The impact is still largely unknown.
Talking to Israel’s future leaders
But the message is more profound. The aim is to show Israeli leaders — those of today, but above all, those of tomorrow — and Israeli public opinion, that unpunished bad behavior is no longer possible in the West Bank.
And it’s about time, because the international community has turned a blind eye while settlement activity, illegal under international law, has continued to expand. The credibility of a post-war political process depends on it.
Bentzi Gopstein, an advisor to the far-right Minister of National Security, became aware of the message when he tried to pay at a gas station with his credit card. The card had been blocked because he was on the list of violent settlers sanctioned by the United States.
It’s not much, given the scale of the disaster. Still it’s something new after decades of Israeli impunity in their crimes against Palestinians.
