Room for cautious optimism as Biden budges a smidgen?
JVL Introduction
Ben Samuels, reporting from Washington for Haaretz, is cock-a-hoop: the Biden administration’s decision to sanction four West Bank settlers implicated in violence against Palestinians is a “gamechanger”, a “dramatic step”, “an unprecedented case” in which the US government has targeted four violent Israeli settlers.
In principle, the scope of the executive order is wide. According to National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan:
“[It] will allow the United States to issue financial sanctions against those directing or participating in certain actions, including acts or threats of violence against civilians, intimidating civilians to cause them to leave their homes, destroying or seizing property or engaging in terrorist activity in the West Bank.”
Yes of course we welcome it, but we are sceptical.
It looks like a bit of blatant electioneering, trying to appease alienated Arab-American voters. Will it work?
Everything Biden has said and done to this point has given Israel impunity. It is not news that the US could end the conflict tomorrow simply by not underwriting it.
The bottom line is that Biden, despite this concession to pressure, is still underwriting it…
RK
This article was originally published by Haaretz on Fri 2 Feb 2024. Read the original here.
Biden's Executive Order on violent Israeli settlers Is a game-changer
The order could irreversibly alter the West Bank settler enterprise and lays the groundwork for possibly sanctioning Israeli officials, though some critics see it as lip service to Democrats wary of Biden’s Israel-Gaza policy
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Biden and Starver are pooing their pants about losing votes. They both think, in their arrogance, that it’s just the Muslim vote but they will both get the shock of their lives when they see that human beings of all races and creeds despise their inaction to call for a cease fire and their complicity with genocide.
No it won’t curb settler violence, the U.S. will not wield its new weapon with full might and the military industrial complex will make record profits. This is pure signalling, only stopping the funding and supply of weapons will make any material difference. The cancellation of funding to the UNWRA is evidence of the USA’s real intent, as is their military build up and increasingly active involvement in the region. This is genocide management using starvation and disease on top of bombardment. And our government (and opposition) are shamefully complicit.
It is absolutely pathetic its like trying to empty the great lakes by taking out 4 buckets of water a completely meaningless act!
Is it a game changer.. more like a crumb to ease his critics anger, a sop to voters and quite frankly a weak half hearted gesture.. Biden has lied to protect Israel since oct7th and done EVERYTHING he could to aid Netanyahu & his Genocide of Palestinians.
“U.S. officials clearly believe the financial threats and potential sanctions will act as enough of a deterrent before further sanctions have to be issued.”
Clearly?
No justification whatsoever is given for this statement. Indeed the former state department official Aaron David Miller who served as adviser on Israel/Palestine to six US administrations expressed a far more sceptical view in Chris McGreal’s Guardian article on 2 February, and in November Miller wrote this in the FT, which seems appropriate advice for Ben Samuels:
“Anyone who expected much daylight, let alone serious tension, between the Biden administration and Israel as the current war in the Middle East unfolded would have been well advised to lie down and wait for the feeling to pass.”
If you are not drowning don’t clutch at straws.
It would be hard to find a better qualified US government apologist than Miller who is presently free to comment on current policy. His credentials in that respect may be judged by his defence of Blinken on X last Friday when the latter was subjected to protests against his collusion in genocide: “No one in this Administration has deeper sense of compassion, empathy for human suffering and a deeper awareness and feelings for the tragedy and horrors that have been inflicted upon Palestinians.” Sic.
This does not exclude the possibility that global pressures may ultimately compel Biden to change course. However there is no evidence that the current sanctions policy on settlers is anything other than window dressing.
A gnat bite that will go unnoticed.
Meantime, UNRWA have been nominated for, this year’s Nobel Peace Prize.
Israel – presumably, in spiteful retaliation – has, ‘frozen’ UNRWA’s bank accounts. A catastrophic action, in the context of aiding Palestinian refugees.
If Biden wanted to do something to help, he would freeze aid to Israel, until these bank accounts were unfrozen and aid flowed freely, and unhindered, into The Gaza Strip, to the people who need it.
I would suggest a full ceasefire, but I think we all know by now, that will remain at the top of everyone’s wish-list, until such time as the ICJ ruling goes before, first, the UNSC, and then, the UN General Assembly. Then we wait.
Biden is being badly ill-advised and doesn’t seem to realise it – which is troubling.
I wonder how long it will be before the UK Politicians realise they made the wrong call by not voting for a ceasefire in Gaza . Only those MPs who voted for a ceasefire can sleep comfortably, that they made the right decision. The abstainers ( because the Whip told them to ) and those voting against will have to face a large Moslem vote in each of their constituencies – and it seems that Moslem voters (and those supporting freedom for Palestine) will have their say – at the ballot box – moslemvotes.co.uk is organising in the UK (and I assume also something similar in the US ?) – hence the slight shift by Biden.