Settler Sanctions Being Done ‘In Lieu’ of What the US ‘Ought to be Doing’

Earlier this month, US President Joe Biden issued an executive order targeting Israeli settlers in the West Bank accused of attacking Palestinians in the occupied region. It imposed financial sanctions and visa bans on four individuals while keeping open the possibility to expand them.

Weeks later, it was reported that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu protested the order when speaking to Biden on the phone and Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich called on Israeli banks to ignore the order and told reporters that “it is not possible for an Israeli citizen with Israeli money in an Israeli bank to be deprived of rights and assets due to an American order.” However, Israeli banks complied with the order.

“Evading such sanctions regimes can expose banks to significant risks, including compliance risks, money laundering and combating the financing of terrorism risks, legal risks, and reputation risks," the Bank of Israel said in a statement.

The move by the Biden administration is woefully inadequate, according to Dr. Radhika Desai, a professor of Political Studies and director of the Geopolitical Economy Research Group at the University of Manitoba, who spoke with Sputnik’s The Critical Hour on Tuesday.

“The US is imposing these sanctions in lieu of what it ought to really be doing, which is [stop] funding Israel sufficiently so that it hurts and Israel stops raining genocide on Gaza,” Desai said, adding earlier that Israel would have to halt its actions “if the US said, 'look, Mr. Netanyahu, either you comply with us, or your funding stops.’”

However, the US is not doing this because, Desai says, Israel “is a critical part of the infrastructure of US dominance, and that infrastructure has already become so diminished that they can’t afford to lose Israel.”

The actions of the Netanyahu government aren’t necessary to protect that asset, Desai argues, which are only being taken to protect the Netanyahu administration, which “relies on the worst elements in Israeli society.”

“Before this war began,” Desai continued. “Mr. Netanyahu was facing protests [from] a very wide range of Israeli society,” referring to the judicial reform protests that shook the country for months before the October 7 attack.

This has turned countries in the region against the US, including Saudi Arabia, which has “begun to realize that simply allying, in a subservient way, to the United States does not serve its purposes,” the professor clarified.