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TEL AVIV — The Trump administration is considering levying targeted sanctions against Israel over the rising phenomenon of attacks by armed settlers in the West Bank, reports Israeli progressive newspaper Haaretz.
According to that report, Senior US officials, including those in the president’s circle, have in recent months been receiving a unconventional and unusually harsh brief regarding Israel’s defense establishment. It does not merely repeat, day in and day out, the often-rehearsed mantra of “concern” over rising violence, nor does it limit itself to seriously worded official memoranda. Rather, those who are following the issue closely have come to the conclusion that there is a real possibility that either Israeli officials have a hand in the attacks or that they are failing in their duty to prevent them from taking place.
A number of steps are reportedly under consideration, including restrictions on IDF forces that are accused of causing severe harm to Palestinians, and possible restrictions on the use of US-made weapons by certain forces or in certain regions. There is even talk of blacklisting Israeli army officers and police officials suspected of allowing attacks by settlers to take place. The contemplated measures are, at this point, being held in abeyance pending the conduct of elections in both Israel and the US, Haaretz’s sources noted.
The report did not emanate from the White House nor from the Israeli government. Rather, it appeared in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, which attributed the account to “sources” who were not identified by name. Months of US frustration with settler violence have apparently been building to this.
In August, the White House concluded that Israel was not taking settler attacks seriously enough, after a group of armed settlers laid a six-month siege on homes on the outskirts of the northern West Bank village of Qusra. One of the homes under siege belonged to the relatives of a US citizen, and Ambassador Mike Huckabee, a supporter of the settlement movement, this week called the individuals involved in the attacks “Israeli terrorists.”
The US embassy here pressed the Israeli government for arrests and prosecutions of those involved, rather than mere statements of condemnation of the violence. The Trump administration has generally taken a hands-off approach to the settlement issue, choosing not to criticize the Israelis over the matter, cancelling sanctions that were placed on individuals involved in violence against Palestinians on his first day back in office after the Biden transition.
Despite the Trump administration’s hands-off approach to the issue, however, reported violence by armed settlers in the West Bank has continued to escalate in recent months, with the conflict monitor ACLED reporting that 2026 is on track to become the most violent year for incidents of settler-related violence since it first began to monitor the West Bank a decade ago.
The monitor noted that an increasingly armed frontier settler population is at times interacting with local security units in the region. Just on Thursday, Haaretz reported that a 19-year-old Palestinian youth was shot and killed by settlers in a separate attack in the West Bank.
European governments have already taken a number of steps against what they say are networks of individuals financing and enabling attacks by armed settlers, including last June sanctions against entities supporting and financing settlers in the West Bank that were put in place by the UK, Australia, Canada, France, and Norway.
In the US Congress, a measure that would have required the State Department to include in its annual report to Congress details of and trends regarding West Bank violence that resulted in the deaths of American citizens was also voted down by Senate Republicans on Friday by a vote of 51-47. The author of the legislation, which would have required the Secretary of State to include a detailed report on settler violence and related issues in the department’s annual Country Reports on Terrorism, Senator Robert Menendez (D–CA), had also sought to use the measure as a vehicle for holding the IDF accountable for its handling of attacks by settlers on Palestinians.
The measure was opposed by a number of right-leaning settling organizations and by senior senators on the Foreign Relations Committee. According to Haaretz military analyst Amos Harel, US officials are currently waiting to see whether the Israeli authorities will begin to take action against those responsible for the violence before any of the measures now under consideration are actually implemented.
The report's timing is interesting as the mid-term elections approach in the U.S. and Israeli elections also approach.
Pro-Israeli donors have been central to the Trump administration's political survival.
