Trump lifts sanctions on West Bank settlers, earning praise from the Israeli right
Trump also canceled a Biden order blocking sanctions on the International Criminal Court amid his flurry of day-one executive orders
US President Donald Trump speaks to journalists in the Oval Office on January 20, 2025. (Jim WATSON / POOL / AFP)
By Asaf Elia-Shalev January 21, 2025
(JTA) — In one of his first actions as president, Donald Trump canceled sanctions targeting dozens of far-right Israeli individuals and settler organizations accused by the Biden administration of violent extremism against Palestinians.
The rescinding of the sanctions appeared on a long list of executive orders signed by Trump immediately after his inauguration on Monday, many of which focused on undoing policies enacted by his predecessor in the White House.
The move delivers a victory to the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which regarded the sanctions enacted by Biden last year as an inappropriate intervention into the internal affairs of an allied country. Israeli officials had repeatedly asked the incoming president to lift them when he entered office.
Netanyahu’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, who is associated with the settler movement, thanked Trump in a post on social media.
“These sanctions were a severe and blatant foreign intervention in Israel’s internal affairs and an unjustified violation of democratic principles and the mutual respect that should guide relations between friendly nations,” Smotrich wrote.
Other prominent figures on the Israeli right also praised Trump for the move, including Itamar Ben-Gvir, who recently resigned from Netanyahu’s coalition to protest the deal Netanyahu signed with Hamas to release Israeli hostages held in Gaza, and Naftali Bennett, a former Israeli prime minister and erstwhile Netanyahu ally.
Enacted by a Biden administration that was supportive of Israel’s war on Hamas but frustrated with Israeli policy in the West Bank, the sanctions were meant to pressure the Israeli government to take action against surging settler violence targeting Palestinian civilians.
Trump’s lifting of the sanctions comes amid raids by multiple days of settler raids on a West Bank Palestinian village of al-Funduq and as Israel declares an “extensive” military operation against Palestinian militants in the city of Jenin. The raids themselves follow the decision by Israeli’s defense minister, Israel Katz, to release all settlers who had been detained over their activity in the West Bank, a decision that he tied to the ceasefire deal and said was meant to support settlement activity.
“It is better for the families of Jewish settlers to be happy than the families of freed terrorists,” Katz said.
Trump’s day-one executive orders include another move signaling a shift in U.S. policy on Israel. He canceled a Biden order blocking sanctions on the International Criminal Court, which has issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and his former defense minister, Yoav Gallant, over alleged war crimes during the fighting in Gaza. Trump also reportedly plans to revoke the pause imposed by the Biden administration on the supply of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel.
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
