Israeli settlements stand in the way of peace. Biden can defund them all | Michael Schaeffer Omer-Man

If the president is serious about recognising Palestinian statehood, defunding the settlements would be a great first step

Israel and its settlement enterprise are getting a crash course in coercive diplomacy. In the first few hours and days after the Biden Administration announced it was placing financial sanctions on four extremist Israeli settlers, there was a bit of confusion in Israel about what it all meant. Demonstrating the absurdity of the moment, Israeli Finance Minister Betzalel Smotrich told fellow parliamentarians that, it is not possible for an Israeli citizen with Israeli money in an Israeli bank to be deprived of rights and assets due to an American order."

Within a day, one of the sanctioned settlers, a violent extremist named Yinon Levi who the Biden Administration said was involved in forcing Palestinian communities off their land, had his personal and business accounts frozen by Israel's Bank Leumi. A state-owned bank followed suit and froze the account of a second sanctioned settler. The banks understood something the Israeli finance minister didn't seem to grasp - the United States is a very powerful country.

Michael Schaeffer Omer-Man is the director of research for Israel-Palestine at Democracy for the Arab World Now (Dawn). He worked as a journalist in Israel-Palestine for over a decade, including as editor-in-chief of +972 Magazine