Israeli leaders are divided following the United States Department of State's decision to implement a visa restriction policy for Israeli settlers who have carried out violence against Palestinians in the West Bank.
The State Department announced the policy change on Tuesday following weeks of increased violence in the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since the end of the Six-Day War in 1967, following the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks.
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“Israel denounces any violence and has zero tolerance for citizens who may be thinking of taking the law into their own hands or engaging in acts of vigilantism or hooliganism,” Israeli government spokesman Eylon Levy said during a Wednesday news conference, adding that “the large majority of Israeli residents” in the West Bank “are law-abiding citizens.”
Levy's comments, however, are drastically different from those of far-right politician Itamar Ben-Gvir, the national security minister who has routinely downplayed the severity of settler violence.
“My right, the right of my wife and my children to move around Judea and Samaria, is more important than freedom of movement for the Arabs,” Ben-Gvir said in August, using the common Israeli name for the territory, Judea and Samaria. “The right of me and my fellow Jews to travel and return home safely on the roads of Judea and Samaria outweighs the right of terrorists who throw stones at us and kill us.”
A settler suspected of posing a threat to national or public security was placed under administration detention under the orders of Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, the Times of Israel reported Wednesday. Ben-Gvir rebuked the decision, saying on X, the platform previously known as Twitter, “Someone has got confused and forgot who is the enemy and who is the beloved.”
Gallant condemned settler violence during a press conference shortly after the U.S. announced its policy shift, saying, "In a state of law, and Israel is a state of law, the right to use violence belongs only to those who are certified to do so by the government," and he added, "Nobody else has any authority to use violence."
As of Nov. 1, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs had recorded 171 settler attacks against Palestinians since the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks carried out by Hamas in Israel. The daily average of seven settler-related incidents since the attacks is more than double that of the pre-Oct. 7 average. In 2021, there was an average of one attack a day, but that has gone up each year since and has skyrocketed since the outbreak of the war. They said eight Palestinians had been killed by settlers in the month of October following the Oct. 7 attacks.
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U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Tuesday that the policy will target "individuals believed to have been involved in undermining peace, security, or stability in the West Bank, including through committing acts of violence or taking other actions that unduly restrict civilians’ access to essential services and basic necessities."
Israeli forces have also carried out deadly raids in the West Bank against terrorist factions within the region. Even before the war with Hamas broke out, 2023 was already the deadliest year in the West Bank in over two decades, according to the Associated Press.