Although the US sanctions against the Israeli "Yehuda Victory Battalion" are an unprecedented event, it absolutely does not mean that the "special relationship" between the United States and Israel will change.
▲This is an Israeli soldier photographed near the scene of the conflict in the West Bank city of Hebron on April 21. Photo/Xinhua News Agency
Text | Xu Lifan
A few days ago, according to Xinhua News Agency, citing a number of US media reports, the US Government is preparing to sanction the "Yehuda Victory Camp" under the Israel Defense Forces on the grounds of violating the human rights of the Palestinian people in the West Bank. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on April 19 that sanctions "can be expected to be seen in a few days."
The "Yehuda Victory Battalion" is an all-male infantry battalion of ultra-Orthodox Jews and religious nationalists in Israel, which has been stationed in the West Bank for a long time and has repeatedly exposed human rights violations against the Palestinian people.
Both the Associated Press and the Financial Times said it would be the first time the U.S. government had sanctioned Israeli forces. According to media analysis, US-Israel relations may be further strained as a result.
On April 20, local time, the House of Representatives of the United States Congress finally voted to pass a foreign aid bill worth $95 billion, including more than $60 billion in aid to Ukraine and $26 billion in aid to Israel.
Why does the United States impose sanctions on the Israeli military while providing assistance at the same time?
Because of a tragic incident in 2022
U.S. sanctions on Israeli forces have been in the works for some time. According to US media reports, a special group of the US State Department conducted an investigation into whether the Israeli military "violated human rights" in accordance with the "Leahy Act" more than a year ago.
The investigation stemmed from the tragic death of an octogenarian. The elderly man, Omar al-Assad, a dual U.S.-Palestinian citizen, was beaten and detained to death in 2022 at a checkpoint in the "Camp Victory in Yehuda". After the case was exposed, the Israeli military only punished three officers, and no one was held criminally responsible, thus arousing the dissatisfaction of the US side.
According to the "Leahy Act" introduced by the United States in the 90s of the last century, the US federal government is not allowed to provide military support to foreign troops who "seriously violate human rights". If the U.S. State Department is indifferent to the Omar al-Assad case, it is suspected of violating the law.
The West Bank is the seat of the Palestinian Supreme Authority and the main Palestinian concentration outside the Gaza Strip. Over the years, the Yehuda Victory Camp has gained notoriety for the presence of Israeli settlers at the border site. It's just that the outside world has no way of knowing.
A single statistic would give a picture of the actual living conditions of the Palestinian population on the ground. The United Nations records that at least 358 people, a quarter of them children, have been killed in the Palestinian territories of the West Bank since the outbreak of a new round of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on October 7 last year.
On April 20, local time, the Israeli army continued to carry out military operations in the West Bank city of Tulkarem, causing casualties and not allowing ambulances to rescue.
Therefore, the US State Department's investigation into the Omar al-Assad case is not difficult to conduct. A few months ago, the panel recommended that Blinken disqualify several Israeli military and police forces in the West Bank from receiving U.S. assistance.
At the end of March, the U.S. State Department finally issued a yellow card warning to Israel, sanctioning four Israeli settlers who had committed acts of violence against Palestinians in the West Bank. All of these people's assets in the United States will be frozen, and Americans will be prohibited from conducting financial transactions with them.
However, Israel's warning to the US side about this action meant that it was not taken seriously. As a result, the news that the United States was going to sanction the Israeli army came out.
▲On April 20, in the West Bank city of Tulkarem, Israeli military vehicles prevented ambulances from entering the scene of the conflict. Photo/Xinhua News Agency
Why is it delayed until now that sanctions are being prepared
It is interesting to note why the US State Department investigative team recommended sanctions against Israeli border guards and police forces in the West Bank a few months ago, but the US government has been delaying until now to make a decision on action.
This is clearly not about humanitarian efforts in the West Bank, but about the situation in the United States.
Recently, some students from Columbia University and Yale University in the United States are holding anti-Israel demonstrations, and the US police arrested 108 Columbia students at one point, indicating that the differences on the Palestinian-Israeli issue on American campuses have reached a high point in many years.
Some have even compared the current wave of American colleges and universities to the Occupy Wall Street movement of 2011. If the U.S. government doesn't show some degree of toughness on Israel, the U.S. campus boom could spread further.
Even more alarming for the Biden administration is the loss of votes from Arab voters. In the 2020 U.S. election, 59% of Arab American voters in the United States supported Biden. After the outbreak of the current round of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the number of Albanian voters who supported Biden plummeted to 17%. Election experts believe that the increased antipathy of minorities, including Albanians, is one of the main risks that Biden and the Democratic Party will face in this year's election.
Originally, compared with European countries, the proportion of Arab voters in the United States is not high. But the peculiarity is that the region with the largest number of Arabs in the United States happens to be in the swing states. In 2020, Biden won the election mainly by winning in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Michigan is the state with the largest number of Arab voters in the United States, with 200,000 Muslim registered voters.
Therefore, when the U.S. election is about to enter the white-hot stage, the Biden administration wants to sacrifice the Israeli "Yehuda Victory Camp" flag.
▲Data map: On October 12, 2023, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken (left), who visited Israel, met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Tel Aviv. Photo/Xinhua News Agency
The US-Israel "special relationship" will not change
Of course, although the US sanctions on the Israeli "Yehuda Victory Camp" are an unprecedented event, it absolutely does not mean that the "special relationship" between the United States and Israel will change. The Israel lobby and Jewish capital have infiltrated all levels of the U.S. government and Congress, and have even been directly involved in policymaking.
In their book "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy," Mearsheimer and Walt, well-known American international relations scholars, once wrote about how loud the Israeli Jewish bloc is: more than half of the members of the U.S. House of Representatives "will do whatever the U.S. Israel Public Affairs Committee asks them to do."
Therefore, it is not difficult to understand that despite the fact that the differences in the United States over the Palestinian-Israeli conflict tend to be antagonistic, the House of Representatives still passed the aid plan by a large majority. The voices of the few parliamentarians who oppose the plan are hardly heard even in the media.
The US policy on Israel is not motivated by the need to uphold international justice, but by the collusion of various underwater interests. This has been going on for years, and even a tough Trump can't jump out of this huge vortex.
During the 2016 U.S. election, American Jewish groups were initially not optimistic about Trump, but eventually some Jewish capital supported him. As soon as Trump came to power, he immediately moved the US Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, which was supposed to be divided between Palestine and Israel, in return.
Trump is so, and Biden is no exception. Since the outbreak of the current round of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the Biden administration has also proposed some solutions, which has been demonstrated by Blinken's six visits to the Middle East and the lack of many positive responses from the Israeli side.
It can be seen from this that the sanctions imposed by the United States on the Israeli military are only a symbolic response to the election situation based on the "Raisi Act." As for the severity of the sanctions, they may not be as severe as the sanctions imposed on four Israeli settlers in the West Bank in March.
Written by Xu Lifan (Columnist)
Editor / Chi Daohua
Proofreading / Diyan Chen
The Beijing News commented that readers and friends are welcome to contribute. Submission email: [email protected] topic must be the news reported by the institutional media on the day. Manuscripts will be published on a merit-based basis and will be paid. Please write the title of the article in the subject line of the email, and attach the author's signature, identity and occupation, ID number, phone number, and bank account (including account name, bank branch name) and other information at the end of the article in accordance with our publication specifications.