Why West Bank Sanctions Won't Change Israeli Policy — SkimNews
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- UK, France, and Canada all announced new sanctions on Israeli West Bank settlements last week, which the article frames as moral disapproval that avoids any costly or provocative action.
- The piece argues the settlers actually doing the land theft — those in further-flung outposts — won't be deterred by 'a minor economic inconvenience' because they're there by ideological conviction, not accident.
- Mainstream Israelis aren't stopping settlement expansion and have 'given up on a peace process or a two-state solution,' showing no real sympathy for Palestinians as human beings, the article contends.
- The Netanyahu coalition depends on small parties overtly supportive of irregular anti-Palestinian violence, and settlement expansion continued under prior non-Netanyahu governments, according to the piece.
- The author argues the United States faces higher expectations than Canada or Italy as the preeminent global power, so sanctions that would be 'a good idea' for smaller countries are 'almost certainly inadequate' from Washington.
- The piece concludes that meaningfully changing Israeli behavior would require policies that 'inflict pain on nicer, more sympathetic Israelis in Tel Aviv and Haifa' — not just targeted sanctions on settlements.
- The article flags an 'elision' in American discourse between endorsing a two-state solution and making policy choices that would actually bring one about.
Why it matters: The argument reframes the debate from whether to sanction settlements to whether sanctions can ever work: the piece claims only measures that impose costs on mainstream Israelis — not just settler ideologues — would alter the status quo, raising the political bar for any future Democratic administration that wants results rather than symbolism on Israel-Palestine.
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