Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich criticized the Biden administration on Sunday for mulling imposing sanctions on him, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and others over their policies vis-à-vis Palestinians in Judea and Samaria.
Imposing sanctions on a Cabinet minister would deal “a fatal injury to Israeli sovereignty and relations between the countries and this will have serious consequences in many areas,” according to a statement by Smotrich.
The idea was discussed last week in the U.S. National Security Council but no decision was made, Axios reported on Saturday.
In February, President Joe Biden issued an unprecedented executive order allowing for sanctions on “persons undermining peace, security and stability in the West Bank,” citing “high levels of extremist settler violence, forced displacement of people and villages and property destruction.”
Earlier this month, the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned five Israeli entities and three people for what it said is support of acts of “violent extremism” in Judea and Samaria, the latest in a series of such decisions.
The three Israeli citizens sanctioned are farmer Isaschar Manne and Reut Ben-Haim and Aviad Shlomo Sarid of Tzav 9 (“Order 9”), which opposes aid supplies going to Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
The Biden administration remains “deeply concerned about extremist violence and instability in the West Bank, which undermines Israel’s own security,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said at the time.
Last week, the Biden administration announced that it is sanctioning a dual French-Israeli citizen and his family six years after the man served a prison term in the Jewish state.
An Israeli court found Elor Azaria, a former Israeli soldier who is in his late 20s, guilty of shooting an already-incapacitated terrorist, Abdel Fattah al-Sharif, who stabbed an Israeli soldier in Judea on March, 24 2016.
On Sunday, Smotrich condemned these “draconian and undemocratic American sanctions,” saying they “stem from the internal political needs of those who claim to lead the largest democracy in the world and operate with distinctly anti-democratic tools against a brave partner who is the only democracy in the Middle East.”
He then expressed pride in his efforts “to prevent the establishment of a [Palestinian] terrorist state that would endanger the existence of Israel,” a position for which he was “ready to pay any price.
“I discussed this with [Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu] and things will be clarified in a way that is not ambiguous,” said Smotrich.
Official data shows that the number of violent incidents committed by Israelis against Palestinians in the region has dropped significantly.
Meanwhile, Judea and Samaria saw a dramatic rise in Palestinian terrorist attacks in recent months, with shootings reaching their highest level in 2023 since the Second Intifada of 2000-05, according to the IDF.
