Sanctions on Israeli settlements are working – even without the US | Mohsen Farshneshani and Emily Hawley | The Guardian

Amid an unforgiving global news cycle – and as nations weigh their options in responding to the yet unbuilt West Bank settlement project that would “bury the idea of a Palestinian state” – a telling sanctions-related development in Israel passed largely unnoticed outside Israeli media. In Tel Aviv, the new year began with a protest by a violent extremist settler group that has faced UK sanctions since October 2024.

The trigger was a new Israeli banking directive, rushed out to placate Israel’s hardliners, that they said did too little to shield Israelis from international sanctions.

The protest – and the response from the pro-settlement extremist finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, who himself faces sanctions from Australia, Canada and the UK – makes one thing clear: sanctions on extremist Israelis are working, and this remains true even after the Trump administration rolled back all Biden-era sanctions on Israeli settlers last year.