US Secretary of State Antony Blinken notified Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during meetings yesterday that the Biden administration is preparing to announce a series of visa bans against Israeli settlers involved in attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank, an Israeli official tells The Times of Israel. A US official confirmed the plan to AFP.
The announcement will likely only include the number of settlers being banned from the US, rather than their names, the Israeli official says, explaining that the US hopes that the anonymity will serve as a deterrent against those considering targeting Palestinians who won’t know whether they’ve been black-listed or not.
The visa ban could be imposed as early as next week, the Israeli official says.
Biden could have done this years ago but only waited until now. A policy that won’t have any real teeth. I’m not satisfied.
Why do I get the feeling you’d never be satisfied?
I’d kind of be satisfied with a Palestinian state based on 1967 borders with the settlers just the Jewish minority in the new Palestine. They wanted to fuck around. Let them find out.
Obviously, I don’t really think that’s a good idea. The settlements should be dismantled in an orderly fashion and I’m sure plenty of settlers are sweet gay kids who hate their parents and can’t wait to move to Tel Aviv. But it would be pretty satisfying to see those hyper-nationalist parents hoist with their own petard.
“Nothing is ever good enough for me”
Well, this is pretty much nothing, so that checks out.
It’s about as milquetoast response to actual terrorism and ethnic cleansing as you can get. Years late, no real effect or punishment, won’t apply to a relatively large number who are Israeli-US dual-citizens and thus don’t need visas, etc.
Edit: Oh and Israel has a visa waiver agreement with the US right now so unless that’s suspended it’s absolutely useless because nobody even has to apply for a visa from Israel.