President Joe Biden’s executive order allowing financial and travel sanctions on Israelis involved in settler violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank is a rare and positive step to address Israeli persecution of Palestinians. The Biden administration’s rhetoric reveals growing frustration with the increasingly hard line of the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his far-right government. The sanctions, coming on top of similar travel bans issued in December and imposed as Biden was about to visit the electoral swing-state Michigan, which has a large Arab American population, add some bite to the administration’s words.
But the West Bank violence, devastating as it is to its immediate victims, is a sideshow when compared with the extraordinary violence being unleashed against the people of Gaza. And even in the West Bank, the focus of the sanctions is limited. They can be understood as a shot across the bow – a warning that the Biden administration is willing to act – but their modest character and evasion of the Gaza debacle leave considerable room for more decisive action.
