US Treasury terminates sanctions on Israeli settlers in West Bank

The Treasury Department on Friday officially removed U.S. sanctions against dozens of Israeli groups and individuals accused of violence against Palestinians in the West Bank as part of President Donald Trump’s major reversal of Biden-era policy in the region.

The action carries out Trump’s Day One move to rescind former President Joe Biden’s February 2024 executive order that authorized the financial sanctions as punishment for Israeli individuals and settler groups accused of violence against Palestinian people or destroying their property.

The rollback of the sanctions policy was part of Trump’s reversal of dozens of Biden-era executive orders and actions.

The sanctions had cut the Israeli settlers and organizations off from U.S. financial institutions and froze their assets in U.S. bank accounts.

In a statement on Friday, Treasury said that all property and interests that had been frozen by the Biden-era sanctions has now been “unblocked.”

The Biden administration last February took a range of steps, including financial sanctions, to address the violence against Palestinian people and property in the West Bank that had exploded since the Israel-Hamas war that began following the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attack against Israel. The European Union and United Kingdom have taken similar steps to impose sanctions targeting violence by Israeli settlers against Palestinians in the West Bank.

The sanctions were strongly opposed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as well as many Congressional Republicans.

Trump is expected to take a far more permissive approach to Israel’s expansion of settlements in the West Bank than Biden did. During his first term, the Trump administration reversed longstanding U.S. policy that Israeli settlements in the West Bank were a violation of international law.