Michael Arria
Mondoweiss / January 27, 2025
In recent days, President Trump has overturned some of the small restrictions that the Biden administration had placed on Israel, garnering high praise from Israel’s far-right.
In recent days, President Trump has overturned some of the small restrictions that the Biden administration had placed on Israel.
One of Trump’s first executive orders was to lift sanctions that had been imposed on 30 Jewish settler groups. “[We] have repeatedly stressed with their Israeli counterparts that Israel must do more to stop violence against civilians in the West Bank and hold accountable those responsible for it,” former State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller told reporters after Biden announced a new round of settler sanctions last November. “But, as we have also made clear, in the absence of such actions by the government of Israel, we will continue to take our own steps to hold those responsible for violent extremism accountable.”
The moves did nothing to deter settler attacks on Palestinians. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported that 2024 saw the highest numbers of settler violence in nearly two decades, since the organization began documenting such cases. According to OCHA, 4,250 Palestinians were displaced and 1,760 structures destroyed, in roughly 1,400 incidents involving Jewish settlers across the West Bank.
Just an hour before Trump rescinded Biden’s measures, dozens of masked Jewish settlers attacked homes and businesses in the Palestinian villages of Jinsafut and Al-Funduq. The Palestinian Red Crescent reported that they treated12 people who were beaten by the settlers.
While the sanctions didn’t have a discernible impact, their removal was celebrated by far-right members of the Israeli government. Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich called the sanctions a “severe and blatant foreign intervention” and praised Trump’s “unwavering and uncompromising support for the state of Israel.”
Itamar Ben-Gvir, who was Israel’s Minister of National Security before resigning over the recent ceasefire, said that he welcomed the “historic decision of incoming U.S. President Donald Trump to lift the sanctions imposed by the Biden administration on the settlers of Judea and Samaria.”
Days after the settler sanctions were repealed, Axios reported that Trump would lift Biden’s hold on 2,000 pound bombs to Israel. The Biden administration had instituted the pause in response to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s invasion of Rafah last May.
The Biden team continued sending Israel other weapons, and even reportedly pressured Democratic members of Congress to back a major arms deal, but that didn’t stop Netanyahu from claiming that the U.S. was impeding his war on Gaza.
“We generally do not know what he’s talking about, we just don’t,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters at the time. “There are no other pauses, none, no other pauses or holds in place.”
“A lot of things that were ordered and paid for by Israel, but have not been sent by Biden, are now on their way!,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
Trump has also caused concern by seemingly endorsing a plan to ethnically cleanse Gaza.
“I’d like Egypt to take people, and I’d like Jordan to take people. I could — I mean, you’re talking about probably a million and a half people,” he told reporters over the weekend. “And we just clean out that whole thing. It’s — you know, it’s — over the centuries, that’s — that’s many, many conflicts, that site. And I don’t know. It’s — something has to happen. But it’s literally a demolition site right now. Almost everything’s demolished.”
His comments were quickly condemned by human rights groups and lawmakers.
“To ‘clean’ Gaza immediately after the war would in fact be a continuation of the war, through the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people,” said Adalah director Hassan Jabareen.
“Trump said he wants to ‘clean out’ Gaza and push the millions of Palestinians living there into neighbouring countries,” tweeted Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. “There is a name for this — ethnic cleansing — and it’s a war crime. This outrageous idea should be condemned by every American.”
In a recent interview Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, indicated that he would welcome a “a dialogue” with Hamas and heaped praised the Qatari government for helping to facilitate the ceasefire.
“I think you can get everybody on board in that region. I really do. With a new sense of leadership over there,” he said.
A recent report in the pro-Israel Jewish Insider laments the fact that Iraq War veteran Dan Caldwell seems to be playing a key role at The Pentagon. Caldwell has criticized the U.S.-Israel relationship in the past.
“Eventually, just like we have with Ukraine, where we’ve run out of stuff to give them,” Caldwell said during a podcast last year. “[W]e may find ourselves in that same position with Israel — and it can’t be overcome right away by dumping more money into the military-industrial complex.”
Michael Arria is Mondoweiss’ U.S. correspondent
