The US State Department has announced the threat of travel bans on extremist Jewish settlers, saying they will not benefit from new rules on visa-free entry into the US and will have current US visas revoked.
Dozens of settlers banned from US
The group targeted by the US decision is estimated to include dozens of Israeli settlers and their families. While they have not been publicly identified, they are accused of violent action against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, often supported by Israeli forces.
On one hand, the US has refrained from publicly criticising Israel’s military offensive following Hamas terror attacks in early October, though it has pressed Israel to consider the disproportionate civilian casualties in heavily populated southern Gaza and to implement “humanitarian pauses”.
The settler violence seen in the West Bank and Israel’s failure to prevent it, have, on the other hand, attracted a clearer US response. “We have underscored to the Israeli government the need to do more to hold accountable extremist settlers who have committed violent attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank,” Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken said in a statement. “As President Biden has repeatedly said, those attacks are unacceptable.”
The toll of settler violence
A minimum of eight Palestinian deaths and 314 attacks on Palestinians and their property have been recorded by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the West Bank since the October 7 Hamas attacks. Notably, almost 50% of these attacks had the support or direct participation of Israeli forces. At least 33% of the assaults on Palestinians involved firearms and shootings, the Office has said.
“Instability harms the people”
The US travel ban comes then as part of increased US pressure to render Israel accountable for settler violence against Palestinians and to make the link between instability in the region and prosperity, security and peace for all. “Both Israel and the Palestinian Authority have the responsibility to uphold stability in the West Bank,” Blinken said. “Instability in the West Bank both harms the Israeli and Palestinian people and threatens Israel’s national security interests.”
Israel, meanwhile, has raised its own travel alert warning levels for dozens of nations around the world, calling on its citizens to reconsider the necessity of travel and to refrain from public protests and outward displays of identiy, citing increased antisemitism and targeting of Jewish sites and people.
