US poised to impose sanctions on Israel Defence Forces’ unit

The highly significant move, which would be the first time the US government has targeted an IDF unit, prompted immediate anger among Israeli political leaders who vowed to oppose it.

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported on Sunday that the US was also considering similar moves against other police and military units.

The reported plans were disclosed as Israeli strikes on the southern Gaza city of Rafah on Saturday night killed 18 people, including 14 children, according to health officials in Gaza.

The news of possible sanctions against the Netzah Yehuda battalion follows a statement by the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, on Friday that he had made ‘determinations’ over the claim that Israel had violated the Leahy law, which prohibits the provision of military assistance to police or security units that commit gross violations of human rights.

Since the law was enacted, US aid has been blocked to hundreds of units around the world accused of rights violations.

The state department has been investigating a number of Israeli security units, including police and military, for alleged violations, as senior Israeli officials indicated they had been lobbying against the imposition of any sanctions.

Soldiers from the unit were accused in the death of a 78-year-old US citizen, Omar Assad, who died of a heart attack in 2022 after being detained, bound, gagged and then abandoned by members of the unit. It was one of a number of high-profile incidents that have included claims of torture and mistreatment.

That case attracted scrutiny from the state department, which demanded a criminal investigation.

The unit was later redeployed from the West Bank to northern Israel and has also been deployed in Gaza.

According to ProPublica last week, the state department had received a dossier on violations of the Leahy law in December.

The report that an IDF battalion is facing imminent sanctions prompted a sharp response from senior Israeli figures, including the country’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

‘The IDF must not be sanctioned!’ he wrote on X. ‘I’ve been working in recent weeks against the sanctioning of Israeli citizens, including in my conversations with the American administration.

‘At a time when our soldiers are fighting terrorist monsters, the intention to issue sanctions against a unit in the IDF is the height of absurdity and a moral low,’ he added, committing to fight the move although it was not clear how.

‘The Netza Yehuda battalion is an inseparable part of the Israel Defence Forces,’ added Benny Gantz, a senior member of Netanyahu’s war cabinet and a former IDF chief of staff.

Human rights organisations have long argued, however, that the IDF’s military investigative system fails to properly investigate and prosecute human rights abuses committed by soldiers.

The reported plan to impose sanctions on the unit came to light amid a mounting international sanctions campaign against Israelis involved in violence against Palestinians on the occupied West Bank, leading to new announcements targeting individuals and organisations almost monthly.

On Friday, the US and EU separately announced new sanctions against far-right Israeli groups and NGOs linked to settler violence as well as high-profile individuals, including Bentzi Gopstein, who has been a close political ally of Israel’s far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir.

The complex and conflicted international choreography of aid and sanctions relating to Israel, strikingly apparent this weekend and during Iran’s attack on Israel a week ago, appears designed to demonstrate that while its allies will support what it regards as Israel’s defence, they are determined to punish escalating extremist violence on the West Bank.