The Yesha Council, the umbrella group of local authorities in Judea, Samaria and the Jordan Valley, made an unusual request of Israel’s State Comptroller on Monday, urging him to review how Israel’s government deals with sanctions against Israeli citizens by foreign countries.
In a letter to State Comptroller Matanyahu Englman, Yisrael Ganz, governor of the Binyamin Regional Council and chairman of the Yesha Council, pointed out the “worrying phenomenon” over the last several months of foreign states, with which Israel maintains relations, imposing sanctions against law-abiding Israeli citizens and legitimate organizations.
The citizens and organizations sanctioned weren’t under suspicion or being investigated, and certainly weren’t indicted or convicted of anything, Ganz added.
Foreign states are simply motivated by politics, he said. "[A] number of Western countries prevent Israeli citizens from living a normal life due to the fact that they are engaged in an activity that those governments don’t like.”
“The meaning is simple: These countries criminalize policies,” Ganz wrote.
The letter is a product of growing frustation on the part of the Yesha Council with what it perceives as Israeli government inaction on the issue.
While Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has condemned the sanctions against residents of Judea and Samaria, both publicly and in meetings with the Yesha Council, and promised to work against them, there have been no tangible changes on the ground.
Ganz referred to his frustrations in his letter to Engleman, saying the Yesha Council has repeatedly asked the government to do more, specifically regarding its Aug. 8 request to appoint a project manager, (a kind of “sanctions czar”), who would head up the effort to counter the sanctions.
“To our great regret, all our requests came up empty,” Ganz wrote.
Starting in 2023, the Biden administration has acted against the Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria with the U.S. State Department announcing a visa restriction policy blocking individuals it deemed dangerous to “peace, security or stability” in Judea and Samaria.
On March 14, 2024, the U.S. sanctioned three Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria and two organizations.
It has since engaged in several rounds of sanctions against residents and organizations in Judea and Samaria.
The list of countries imposing sanctions—the United Kingdom, Spain, Germany, Norway, Canada, Japan, France and others—has grown in recent months.
“The sanctions are a danger to the sovereignty of the State of Israel. This is a slippery slope and the Israeli government is not doing enough in this regard to protect its sovereignty,” Ganz told JNS. “We must not allow other countries, even if they are friendly, to dictate policies and control citizens and non-parliamentary organizations.”
Netanyahu reportedly expressed his displeasure to U.S. President Joe Biden about the sanctions in February.
In August, in a discussion of the issue the Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee, Knesset member Simcha Rothman, who heads the committee, said that the sanctions were a “violation of [Israeli] sovereignty in the most basic sense.”
In January, then-Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen condemned reports of growing “settler violence” as a modern-day antisemitic “blood libel.”
“The anti-Israeli campaign called ‘settler violence’ is a false campaign, disconnected from reality, and its entire purpose is to slander an entire population. The community that settles in Judea and Samaria is a law-abiding community that contributes to the state in many areas,” he said.
Critics of sanctions have pointed out that the U.S. has imposed no sanctions against the Palestinian Authority for funding terrorism, even though Palestinian Arab violence is many multiples of Jewish violence.
