US announces visa bans for Israeli ‘extremist settlers’ in West Bank

The Biden administration announced Tuesday it will implement visa bans on Israelis viewed as “extremist settlers” in the West Bank.

The policy move follows President Biden’s warning last month that sanctions could be imposed on individuals the U.S. views as involved in violence against Palestinians, particularly in the larger territory.

State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said the U.S. is in the process of sanctioning people, likely to impact “dozens of individuals and their family members.” The State Department typically does not publish visa bans. 

Under the policy, any Israeli citizen deemed to be committing acts of violence or undermining peace and security in the West Bank, particularly against Palestinians, will be banned from entering the U.S.

If the person currently has a visa to enter the U.S., they will be notified that that the document has been revoked, Miller said.

Other individuals singled out for sanctions that don’t currently hold a visa will not be notified, he added, but they will be blocked from obtaining one if they were to go through the application process.

The move is notable as the U.S. recently admitted Israel into the waiver program, which allows Israelis to travel into the U.S. without going through the visa process.

“The United States is taking action to address this escalating violence in the West Bank,” Miller said.

The United Nations and other humanitarian organizations have warned of an alarming spike in violent attacks by Israeli settlers in the West Bank against Palestinians, to include reprisal violence for Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre and hostage taking — which sparked the ongoing war in the region.

But settler-violence is part of a larger problem of extremist Israelis who critics say are emboldened by Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government to settle, by force, the territory of the West Bank that was partitioned between Israel and the Palestinian Authority under the 1993 Oslo Accords, but is supposed to be the decided in final-status negotiations for a future Palestinian State. 

In 2022, nearly 2,000 Palestinians were displaced because of settler violence, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in a statement Nov. 1. OCHA has documented at least seven incidents of violence per day by settlers against Palestinians since Oct. 7.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in a statement announcing the visa-ban policy, also raised the issue of Palestinian violence against Israelis. Israeli forces, sometimes in coordination with Palestinian security forces, have sought to address an increase in armed Palestinian groups operating in the West Bank, plotting and carrying out attacks against Israelis. 

Israel in March 2022 launched “Operation Breakwater” to combat a rise in armed Palestinian groups in the West Bank. 

“The United States has consistently opposed actions that undermine stability in the West Bank, including attacks by Israeli settlers against Palestinians, and Palestinian attacks against Israelis,” Blinken said.

“Both Israel and the Palestinian Authority have the responsibility to uphold stability in the West Bank. Instability in the West Bank both harms the Israeli and Palestinian people and threatens Israel’s national security interests,” he continued. “Those responsible for it must be held accountable.”