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February 11, 2024

On Feb 1, 2024 President Biden signed an executive order that imposes sanctions “on persons undermining peace, security, stability, in the West Bank.” Biden explained in the order that:

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The situation in the West Bank — in particular high levels of extremist settler violence, forced displacement of people and villages, and property destruction — has reached intolerable levels and constitutes a serious threat to the peace, security, and stability of the West Bank and Gaza, Israel, and the broader Middle East region.

One of the incidents of violence that led to Biden signing the order was the shooting of a 17-year-old American by the name of Tawfiq Abel Jabbar two weeks before. After the shooting U.S. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby extended Washington’s “deepest condolences” to his family and insisted on the killing being investigated even though the reason he was shot was known, Tawfiq was shot by an Israeli he was stoning on Route 60, the main north-south highway in Judea and Samaria.

Jabbar’s mother told Al-Araby Al Jadeed that since the family returned to Samaria from Gretna, La. Tawfiq had regularly attacked Jewish drivers in the area of Wadi Haramiya. Her son was “always talking about martyrdom,” she noted. “Tawfic was an outstanding student in school, and he hoped to become an engineer, but he obtained the greatest certificate in the world by his martyrdom,” Mona Abdel Jabbar said.

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Since the 1980s, at least 16 people have been killed as a result of car crashes caused by Palestinian rock-throwers, including 11-year-old Chava Wechsberg, five-month-old Yehuda Shoham, and Asher Palmer and his one-year-old son — all four of them dual Israeli-American citizens. No sanctions were imposed on the Palestinians for those attacks.

On February 26,2023 there was a traffic jam on Route 60 near the town of Hurwara. A Palestinian took advantage of the stopped cars and opened fire on them killing two brothers. Their parents said that nothing would fill the hole in their hearts after losing their sons. Settlers reacted by rioting later that day in Huwara. One of those settlers, David Chai Chasdai was sanctioned by the U.S. State Department for doing so.

The Palestinian Authority pays stipends to terrorists in Israeli jails as well as to their families. Palestinian terrorists can commit mass murder knowing that their families will be well taken care of. On March 8, 2016, a 21-year-old Palestinian man from Qalqilya killed Taylor Force, an American tourist and wounded ten civilians in a stabbing spree in Jaffa and Tel Aviv. Then-vice president Joe Biden was in Israel when Taylor Force was stabbed to death there. In fact, he was in Tel Aviv, where the murder occurred. Even more coincidental, he was in the immediate vicinity. He personally “condemned in the strongest possible terms the brutal attack,” adding that “there is no justification for such acts of terror.” President Trump signed the Taylor Force Act into law which cut aid to the Palestinian Authority until they stopped funding individuals who commit terror and their families. In Biden’s first 100 days in office Biden resumed funding the Palestinians in violation of the Taylor Force Act.

There is a pattern emerging here which is that it is not the settlers who are instigating the violence “that is a serious threat to peace” — but it is the settlers who are being sanctioned.

Mizpeh Yericho is a town next to Jericho in Judea. Aliza Pilichowski, the mayor of Mizpeh Yericho, wrote in the Jerusalem Post that:

While the world is making a big deal out of “settler violence” it’s ignoring the daily Palestinian terrorism in the West Bank. Palestinians attempt and commit three to six terror attacks a day in Israel. These are targeted attacks against innocent civilians. Last week a Palestinian terrorist shot two Jews in Samaria, one died. The headlines on that same day omitted the Palestinian terror attack and instead focused on “settler violence” that in actuality was graffiti.