Was Joe Biden’s announcement of unprecedented US sanctions against Israeli settlers in occupied Palestine a sign of political weakness at home, or of a newly found willingness to assert American influence over Israel?
The president signed the executive order imposing financial and travel sanctions on settlers who violently attack Palestinians shortly before a campaign rally in the swing state of Michigan, where the largest Arab American population in the country has rounded on Biden over his largely blanket support for Israel’s assault on Gaza.
Some saw the move as a blatant attempt to win back support among Arab American voters, which has plummeted in a state that Donald Trump won in 2016 and Biden took by less than 3% of the vote four years later. Trump could win Michigan again if large numbers of voters who supported Biden in 2020 do not vote, delivering the former president a key piece of the electoral college vote.
Yousef Munayyer, the former director of the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, doubted that the president’s executive order would do much to quell Arab American anger over his support for Israel’s war on Gaza, which has killed more than 27,000 Palestinians, most of them civilians. But he said the move was nonetheless significant because it represents an unusual US effort to sanction Israelis over their violations of Palestinian rights.
“That said, the extent to which it is effective depends a lot on the political will to designate violent Israeli settlers. If done honestly, it could have a significant impact not just on the violent settlers themselves but an entire transnational financing network,” he said.
“That is the test that will tell us whether this is a serious effort at addressing a real problem on the ground or an unserious effort at trying to save face for Biden in an election year with voters appalled at his handling of Palestine.”
Biden’s order said there are intolerable levels “of extremist settler violence, forced displacement of people and villages, and property destruction”. Attacks have escalated under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s latest government as far-right ministers push for annexation of all or some of the West Bank. There are concerns in Washington that the violence could result in a full-scale third Palestinian uprising that would make the prospect of a Palestinian state even more distant.
Biden’s order imposes financial and travel restrictions on those responsible, and named four Israelis who will be immediately subject to sanctions. The order also has provisions to sanction settler leaders, politicians and government officials who encourage violence.
If firmly enforced, the order also has the potential to limit American groups from funding the more extreme settlements, some of which are heavily financed by donations from the US.
But Aaron David Miller, who served six US secretaries of state as an adviser on Arab-Israeli peace talks, doubted that sanctions against the settlers are a serious effort to exert wider pressure on Netanyahu to agree to a Palestinian state. Miller said that if the Biden administration wanted to do that, it has more effective ways.
“They have all kinds of levers they could pull to demonstrate that they’re not just frustrated and annoyed but they’ve reached the point where it’s difficult for them to consider him to be a partner, or his government,” he said.
“They could have slow-walked a restricted military assistance, particularly munitions. They could have abstained on a UN security council resolution. Or they could have basically said we need a cessation of hostilities, and joined with the international community in pressuring the Israelis to stop. They have levers they could have pulled, but they haven’t done it.”
Miller said that Biden has spent his term as president avoiding conflict with and over Israel, and that whatever his concerns about dissent within his own party, he will not want to hand Trump a political weapon.
“He certainly doesn’t want to give the Republican party, and the presumptive Republican nominee, a hammer to pound him as someone who’s hostile or even angry at Israel,” he said.
Miller was also cautious about the state department floating the possibility of the US recognising a Palestinian state as a means to move the peace process forward. The British foreign secretary, David Cameron, suggested a similar move in combination with allies as a means to make the process of negotiating a two-state solution “irreversible”.
But Miller said that he thought that Washington recognising a Palestinian state “is almost impossible for this administration to do”.
