On his first day in office, President Donald Trump terminated the first-ever US sanctions programme specifically designed to address Israeli abuses against the Palestinians.
The move drew predictable praise from ultranationalist, hardline factions in Israel, and condemnation from observers worldwide. But a year after former President Joe Biden issued an executive order to launch the programme, it is critical to assess his own administration’s role in undermining it.
Biden’s executive order was a bold step, giving tangible weight to decades of US foreign policy rhetoric by authorising targeted sanctions against individuals and entities responsible for destabilising activities in the occupied West Bank.
For the first time, US sanctions policy confronted Israeli actors complicit in settlement expansion, settler violence and Palestinian dispossession – realities that US officials had long described as “an obstacle to peace” but never enforced consequences for, nor officially recognised as violations of international law.
Yet the Biden administration’s initial show of resolve was quickly eclipsed by political timidity and a failure of executive will. This retreat pulled the punch of the West Bank sanctions, reducing them from a potent foreign policy instrument to a glancing blow…..more
