New US measures, including a warning to banks to check transactions linked to all Israeli “outposts” in the West Bank, suggest Washington is prepared to take at least some steps to confront Israel’s “creeping land grab” in the occupied territory, according to The Guardian.
The newspaper says new individuals and organisations have also been added to a growing sanctions list.
The new sanctions cover the far-right group Lehava, already listed by the UK, and two founding members of Tsav9, a campaign group that blocked aid from reaching Gaza.
Referring to new measures targeting settler outposts, The Guardian notes that one of the outposts targeted was set up by a regional council, implying that branches of the Israeli state are potentially no longer off limits when it comes to sanctions.
The report quotes Aaron David Miller, a former state department Middle East negotiator, now a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, as saying: “It appears that they’ve not just targeted extremist settlers but have introduced a linkage to territoriality by citing illegal outposts.
“It doesn’t take much imagination to conclude that the next target would be [Israeli] government financing for illegal outposts. And that would be a new departure to be sure.”
The Guardian reports that, on Thursday, the G7 foreign ministers joined the UN and EU in condemning the Israeli government’s decision last month to legalise five outposts in the West Bank, labelling the plan “inconsistent with international law”.
The newspaper reports that the G7 statement comes at a time of rising concern that Israel’s rightist government is steadily moving towards annexation of the West Bank.
[Image: יעקב, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18864803]