Trump Lifts Settler Sanctions, West-Bank Violence Explodes
On his first day in office, Donald Trump lifted all sanctions previously placed on Israeli settlers in the West Bank, a political move that coincided with a series of violent attacks by Israeli settlers targeting Palestinians that same night.
While the president has publicly committed to combating violent extremism, extremist settler groups continue to finance their activities through American charities.
On Monday night, with the backing of the Israeli military, settler groups launched a series of violent assaults on residents in the West Bank. The most severe attacks occurred in two villages near Qalqilya, where masked settlers set fires and fired indiscriminately.
Amid the chaos, Israeli soldiers deployed tear gas against villagers attempting to flee, leaving 21 people injured.
2008 map of a portion of the West Bank showing Qalqilya and Hableh enclaves. (CIA derivative work, Zero0000, Wikimedia Commons, Public domain)
Amidst the wave of violence, an Israeli police officer mistakenly shot two masked settlers, believing them to be Palestinians. One was killed instantly. In the aftermath, Israeli authorities imposed a complete lockdown on the West Bank, leaving civilians stranded in their cars and on the streets.
The following day, Israel announced a major military operation targeting the northern West Bank, beginning with an assault on the Jenin Refugee Camp.
Defense Minister Israel Katz dubbed the campaign “Operation Iron Wall,” vowing to crush the growing number of anti-occupation resistance groups that have expanded in the region since 2021.
The operation, Katz declared, would draw upon Israel’s “method of repeated raids in Gaza” to achieve its objectives.
Katz, left, in November 2024, with his predecessor Yoav Galant. (Spokesperson and Public Relations Division of the Ministry of Defense of Israel, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0)
On Jan. 17, the Washington-based advocacy group Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN) released a report accusing Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael-Jewish National Fund and its subsidiaries of funding illegal settlement expansion and encouraging violence against Palestinian civilians. According to the report, the Israeli-registered entities use affiliates in the U.S., Canada and the U.K. to raise money.
DAWN has called on the U.S. government to impose sanctions on the organizations it accuses of funding Israeli settler extremism. However, they are far from the only entities using American donations to support such activities.
An investigation by Haaretz revealed that the Temple Institute — an organization with the stated goal of demolishing the Al-Aqsa Mosque, Islam’s third holiest site, to construct a Jewish synagogue in its place — has received financial backing from a prominent U.S. donor closely linked to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Through platforms like America Gives, a partner of Israel Gives, Americans can make tax-deductible donations directly to the Temple Institute. The organization, which has previously relied on donations for half of its funding, benefits from this streamlined flow of contributions, and it’s not the only one.
In 2019, The Nation magazine exposed a network of U.S.-registered non-profit organizations that have been used to finance Israeli extremists.
The role of U.S. citizens and their donations in enabling messianic-extremist settler movements cannot be overstated. However, the Trump administration has adopted one of the most hardline pro-settler positions in American history, a stance made abundantly clear by the individuals selected to fill key cabinet roles.
On Tuesday, during her confirmation hearing, Trump’s nominee for U.N. ambassador, Elise Stefanik, declared her belief that Israel possesses a “biblical right” to the entirety of the occupied West Bank. When pressed, she refused to affirm that Palestinians have a right to self-determination.
This comes as little surprise given the financial entanglements at the heart of the Trump campaign. The campaign’s top financier, Miriam Adelson — Israel’s wealthiest billionaire — pledged $100 million to support the former president. According to Haaretz, the contribution came with a clear understanding: Trump would allow Israel to annex the West Bank.
Trump’s very own son-in-law and close confidant, Jared Kushner, has well-known ties to the financing of illegal settlements. The Kushner Foundation funneled money not only to the West Bank settlement of Beit El, but to an extremist Yeshiva (Jewish religious school) located in a settlement near Nablus.
This Yeshiva, infamous for hosting extremist rabbis who help organize violence against Palestinians, has been linked to incendiary rhetoric, including providing religious justification for the murder of Arab children.
Robert Inlakesh is a political analyst, journalist and documentary filmmaker cbased in London. He has reported from and lived in the occupied Palestinian territories and hosts the show “Palestine Files.” Director of “Steal of the Century: Trump’s Palestine-Israel Catastrophe.” Follow him on Twitter @falasteen47
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