UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron pushes Israel’s government to do more to combat wave of anti-Palestinian attacks, says it makes commitments but doesn’t follow through.
The United Kingdom imposed sanctions on four Israeli nationals on Monday who it said had carried out violent attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank, following a US move slapping unprecedented financial and travel restrictions on Israelis active in settlements earlier this month.
British Foreign Secretary David Cameron said the four targeted Israeli settlers, one of whom was also included in the US sanctions, were involved in “egregious abuses of human rights.”
“Extremist Israeli settlers are threatening Palestinians, often at gunpoint, and forcing them off land that is rightfully theirs,” he added. “This behavior is illegal and unacceptable.”
Yinon Levi, Moshe Sharvit, Zvi Bar Yosef and Ely Federman were identified by the UK government as “Israeli settlers who have violently attacked Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.”
Of the four, only Levi was included in sanctions announced by the US.
In a statement, the UK said that Levi and Sharvit “have in recent months used physical aggression, threatened families at gunpoint, and destroyed property as part of a targeted and calculated effort to displace Palestinian communities.”
On October 17, Hebrew daily Haaretz reported an incident in which several dozen Palestinians had fled their home village of Ein Shabli in the Jordan Valley after Israeli settlers attacked members of their community and vandalized their homes. Sharvit was named by the Haaretz report as one of the key instigators of the attack.
Levi, too, was involved in similar incidents according to a statement by the US State Department earlier this month. The founder of the Meitarim Farm outpost in the southern West Bank, he was accused of assaulting Palestinian and Bedouin civilians, threatening them with additional violence if they did not leave their homes, burning their fields, and destroying their property, leading to a West Bank village being abandoned by its approximately 250 residents.
