The United States has announced it will begin restricting visas to individuals believed to be committing violence against civilians in the West Bank “regardless of the perpetrator or the victim.”
In an official statement published on Tuesday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken expressed that “the United States has consistently opposed actions that undermine stability in the West Bank, including attacks by Israeli settlers against Palestinians, and Palestinian attacks against Israelis. As President Biden has said, those attacks are unacceptable.”
According to the statement, the new policy intends to target individuals “involved in undermining peace, security, or stability in the West Bank, including committing acts of violence or taking other actions that unduly restrict civilians’ access to essential services and necessities.”
The State Department’s announcement of the policy comes after Biden’s November 18 op-ed for the Washington Post in which he explicitly mentions a visa ban and criticizes extremist settler violence in the West Bank.
Both Biden and Blinken have recently urged Israeli officials to bring harsher penalties against Israeli settlers, with the president calling for “accountability” for those “attacking Palestinians in places that they’re entitled to be.”
The statement does not identify any specific individuals due to State Department privacy rules but does indicate that the family members of those found liable would potentially face restrictions as well.
Under this policy, both Israelis and Palestinians could be subjected to visa bans in the coming days. Blinken called upon both the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority to do more to prevent attacks on civilians in the West Bank, saying that “instability [caused by the violence] in the West Bank both harms the Israeli and Palestinian people and threatens Israel’s national security interests.”