AMP Welcomes Sanctions Against Israel, Condemns Shameful U.S. Response

The new measures are long overdue, but do not go far enough. More must be done.

American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) welcomes the sanctions and trade restrictions announced by the United Kingdom (UK), France, Canada, and eight other Western nations against Israeli imports produced in illegal Israeli settlements. AMP also supports the UK’s decision to deny license applications for arms that “materially contribute to the occupation of Palestinian territories.”

While these measures are long overdue, they do not go far enough. Acknowledging that Israel is carrying out ethnic cleansing in the occupied West Bank is good. But these latest measures still treat Israeli settlers, the settlement enterprise, and the Israeli government as separate entities. Israeli settlers do not act independently of the state but are a direct extension of it. Their attacks on Palestinian communities are enabled and protected by the Israeli government to enact the “Greater Israel Project.”

At the same time, Gaza has been left out of the equation. It is overdue that Western powers impose a complete arms embargo to end Israel’s genocidal onslaught on Gaza. The genocide in Gaza is a byproduct of the undeserved sense of exceptionalism and impunity afforded to Israel by the U.S. and the Western world – which have provided Apartheid Israel with continual unconditional military, diplomatic, and political support.

While other Western governments are finally beginning to impose consequences, the Trump administration continues to behave as Israel’s shield.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has made clear that the U.S. will not join these measures while claiming he does not want “anything destabilizing” occurring in the occupied West Bank or in the region. The irony, of course, is that U.S. support for Israel’s occupation is itself one of the primary drivers of instability in the region. U.S. Ambassador Mike Huckabee has gone even further, calling the British decision “irrational” and warning of economic consequences for Britain.

The Trump administration is threatening an American ally for attempting to hold Israel accountable while refusing to use its enormous leverage over Israel itself. The U.S. repeatedly warns Israel about settler violence, annexation, and regional instability, but refuses to impose the consequences necessary to change or correct the behavior.

Even Ambassador Huckabee’s recent visit to Turmus Ayya, a Palestinian village which contains a large Palestinian-American community in the occupied West Bank tormented by state-backed settler violence, is reduced to political theater. What is the purpose of condemning settler terrorism if the U.S. continues protecting the government that enables it? What is the value of an American ambassador visiting Palestinian Americans attacked by settlers if those attacks produce no consequences?

Israel depends on the United States, not the other way around. The United States must stop allowing the Israeli government to walk all over it while American taxpayers are forced to subsidize Israel’s occupation, apartheid, and genocide. Empty warnings have failed. Symbolic condemnations have failed. Decades of unconditional support have only cultivated Israeli impunity.

It is time for consequences.