Armed Conflict Executive Branch Foreign Relations & International Law

Biden Administration Issues Executive Order on West Bank Instability

Hyemin Han
Thursday, February 1, 2024, 1:15 PM

The order cites “intolerable levels” of violence in the West Bank by Israeli settlers as threatening U.S. interests in the region.

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On Feb. 1, the Biden administration issued an executive order allowing the U.S. to implement new measures to address destabilizing actions in the West Bank—in particular, settler violence. The executive order assesses that the extremist settler violence, forced displacements, and property destruction has reached “intolerable levels” and have the potential to undermine Israel’s security and lead to broader regional destabilization across the Middle East, thus creating “an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States.”

The executive order allows the Treasury Department and the State Department to issue financial and/or immigration-related sanctions against individuals who commit settler violence in the West Bank, among other measures. According to National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, an initial set of designations under this executive order will be released by the State Department later today. 

The executive order is issued pursuant to the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, the National Emergencies Act, section 212(f) and section 215(a) of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, and 3 U.S. Code § 301.

You can read the executive order here or below. Find also President Biden’s notification of the executive order to Congress.

 


Hyemin Han is an associate editor of Lawfare and is based in Washington, D.C. Previously, she worked in eviction defense and has interned on Capitol Hill and with the U.S. Mission to the United Nations. She holds a BA in government from Dartmouth College, where she was editor-in-chief of The Dartmouth independent daily.

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