President Joe Biden’s administration announced new sanctions on April 19 targeting two fundraisers that it deemed to be supporting extremist settlers in the West Bank.
According to the Treasury Department, Mr. Levi has regularly led groups of violent West Bank settlers, “creating an atmosphere of fear” in the territory.
The department separately accused Mr. Chasdai of initiating a riot in which participants set fire to cars and buildings in the West Bank and assaulted Palestinian civilians there. One Palestinian civilian was reportedly killed in the riot.
The Treasury Department stated that the Mount Hebron Fund had financially supported Mr. Levi and Shlom Asiraich had supported Mr. Chasdai. The fundraisers reportedly generated the equivalent of $140,000 and $31,000, respectively.
“Mount Hebron Fund and Shlom Asiraich generated tens of thousands of dollars for extremists responsible for destroying property, assaulting civilians, and violence against Palestinians,” Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Wally Adeyemo said in an April 19 statement.
Mr. Adeyemo said settler activity continues to undermine peace and security in the West Bank, a disputed territory between Israel and Jordan.
The West Bank has been under varying degrees of Israeli military and civil administration since Israeli forces seized control of the land during the 1967 Six-Day War. Israel has not formally annexed the West Bank but maintains administrative control of sections of the territory.
A U.N. Security Council resolution, adopted unanimously in 1967, calls for the withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from the West Bank. The U.S. government has, for years, referred to the West Bank as an occupied territory subject to the jurisdiction of both the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority.
The West Bank has been primarily inhabited by Palestinian Arabs, but Israeli citizens began moving into and establishing settlements in areas throughout the occupied territory following the Six-Day War. These settlements have often been a point of contention in the long-running Israeli–Palestinian conflict, with opponents arguing that the settlements increasingly carve into territory claimed by the Palestinian people and undermine efforts at a two-state solution.
Recent West Bank Violence
The West Bank has seen outbursts of violence involving Palestinians and Israeli civilians and military forces over the years.Israeli military forces conducted a raid on the Jenin Refugee Camp in the West Bank on June 19 to arrest two wanted individuals. The raid devolved into a gun battle. In the end, at least five Palestinians were killed and more than 90 were injured.
The day after the Israeli military raid in Jenin, a pair of Palestinian gunmen killed four Israelis and injured four more near the Israeli settlement of Eli in the West Bank. The day after that, hundreds of Israeli settlers entered the neighboring Palestinian community of Turmus Ayya and set fire to dozens of cars and homes.
State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said there had already been high levels of violence throughout the West Bank even before the events of Oct. 7, 2023, when gunmen of the Palestinian Hamas terrorist group, which controls the Gaza Strip, entered southern Israel and killed more than 1,200 civilians and Israeli security forces and kidnapped hundreds more.
Israeli settlers entered Palestinian communities and clashed with the residents after the Israeli teen went missing.
According to Palestinian health officials, 26-year-old Palestinian Jehad Abu Alia was killed on April 12 in a settler attack on the Palestinian village of al-Mughayyir, and more than two dozen others were wounded. Palestinian authorities said Israeli settlers returned the next day to torch about a dozen homes and several cars before border police fired tear gas to disperse the rioters.
