The United States has announced new sanctions against extremist settlers in the West Bank funded by the Israeli government, stepping up Washington’s efforts to curb escalating settler violence.
The new measures sparked a sharp reaction from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose office said they were being viewed “with the utmost rigor” and that the issue was currently being “discussed in detail with Washington.”
The sanctions target an organization and an individual who have long been involved in intimidating Palestinians with the goal of taking away their land. The U.S. Treasury Department has designated them as “Special Designated Nationals,” meaning their assets are frozen and U.S. citizens and companies are prohibited from doing business with them.
The group’s target was Hashomer Yosh, which guards illegal settler posts, including some already sanctioned by the US. The group was particularly active in the southern Hebron Hills at the southern end of the West Bank, where violence by Israeli settlers against the local Bedouin population was at its core.
“After all 250 Palestinian residents of Khirbet Zanuta (a village at the center of the land struggle) were forced to leave in late January, Hashomer Yosh volunteers fenced off the village to prevent residents from returning,” U.S. State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said in a statement.
Hashomer Yosh is officially a non-governmental organization, but in recent years it has been funded and supported by Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition.
The target of Wednesday’s sanctions was Yitzhak Levi Filant, the security coordinator of the Yitzhar settlement, south of Nablus. Like other settler security coordinators, he receives his salary directly from the Israeli Defense Ministry.
“Although Filant’s role is similar to that of a security or law enforcement officer, he has engaged in malicious activities that are outside his scope of authority,” Miller said.
“In February 2024, he led a group of armed settlers who set up roadblocks and conducted patrols to stalk, attack and forcibly evict Palestinians from their land.”
Netanyahu’s office issued a brief and critical response on Wednesday evening: “Israel views the imposition of sanctions against Israeli citizens with the utmost severity. The issue is the subject of a targeted discussion with the United States.”
The sanctions will make it more difficult for the Israeli government to continue paying Filant or funding Hashomer Yosh without violating U.S. sanctions, and will prevent direct funding from right-wing supporters in the U.S.
The new sanctions reflect the Biden administration’s growing frustration with the Netanyahu government’s failure to contain settler violence – and that frustration is not limited to Washington.
In a letter published last week, Ronen Bar, the head of Israel’s Shin Bet intelligence agency, warned Netanyahu and some of his ministers that violence by the settlers’ “mountaintop youth” that was not being curbed by the state was terrorism and posed a serious threat to national security because it was likely to create a vicious cycle of violence.
The US measures were announced hours after the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) launched raids on Palestinian militants in the West Bank. Bar said one of the causes of Palestinian radicalization was increasing settler violence since the start of the Gaza war in October last year.
This choice of target brings US sanctions a decisive step closer to targeting the members of the coalition closest to the extremist settlers: National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich.
“The United States will continue to take action to promote accountability for those who commit and support extremist violence in the West Bank,” the State Department statement said.
