West Bank Sanctions Target Wrong Israelis — SkimNews
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- The UK, France, and Canada all announced new sanctions on Israeli West Bank settlements last week, which the author frames as expressing moral disapproval 'without doing anything too costly or provocative.'
- Settlement ideologues in further-flung outposts won't be deterred by 'minor economic inconvenience,' the author argues — they're committed to land theft and terrorizing Palestinian villagers, not motivated by economics.
- Mainstream Israelis, per the source, show no sympathy for Palestinians, have given up on a two-state solution, and aren't stopping settlement expansion despite opposition criticism of the 'worst excesses.'
- Settlement expansion continued under prior non-Netanyahu governments, and the West Bank's legal framework is 'inherently tilted against Palestinian civilians' — a structural problem sanctions don't address.
- The author argues meaningful change requires the United States to inflict economic pain on 'nicer, more sympathetic Israelis in Tel Aviv and Haifa,' people who could actually be moved to demand a course correction.
- The piece highlights a gap in American discourse: taking a position on the conflict (two-state solution, unitary state) is rarely matched by policy choices that would actually bring such outcomes about.
Why it matters: The source's argument matters because it identifies a mismatch between the sanctions' stated goal (stopping settlement expansion) and their mechanism: the people sanctioned are hardcore ideologues who won't budge from economic inconvenience, while mainstream Israelis face no pressure to demand change — meaning the chosen policy instruments may not reach the population whose political pressure would actually alter Israeli behavior.
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