Trump Executive Orders Reverse Sanctions on Israelis, Suspend Aid to Palestinians
Then-US President-elect Donald Trump makes remarks at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, US, Jan. 7, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Carlos Barria
In a series of executive orders signed during his first day back on the job, US President Donald Trump rescinded a Biden administration policy sanctioning Israelis living in the West Bank and put a hold on foreign aid for 90 days, a decision which will impact support for Palestinians.
Trump revoked former President Joe Biden’s Executive Order 14115, signed on Feb. 1, 2024, which imposed sanctions on “persons undermining peace, security, and stability in the West Bank.”
The executive order stated that Biden felt “the situation in the West Bank — in particular high levels of extremist settler violence, forced displacement of people and villages, and property destruction — had reached intolerable levels and constituted a serious threat to the peace, security, and stability of the West Bank and Gaza, Israel, and the broader Middle East region.”
Biden claimed that those sanctioned “undermine the foreign policy objectives of the United States, including the viability of a two-state solution and ensuring Israelis and Palestinians can attain equal measures of security, prosperity, and freedom. They also undermine the security of Israel and have the potential to lead to broader regional destabilization across the Middle East, threatening United States personnel and interests.”
The executive order then said that the United States would seize the property of those sanctioned.
Two Americans — Issachar Manne and Levi Yitzchak Pilant, both of whom were sanctioned this past summer — sued the Biden administration earlier this month for their inclusion in the list of those sanctioned. Biden officials would later admit error in the targeting of Manne and Pilant.
Eugene Kontorovich, a legal consultant on the lawsuit and a professor at George Mason University Law School told the Washington Free Beacon that the Biden administration “has carried out this sanctions program with scant regard for the underlying facts and scant independent investigation, relying instead on the say-so of virulently anti-Israel groups in order to impose life-changing penalties on people.” On Monday, Kontorovich thanked Trump for rescinding the executive order.
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich praised Trump’s decision.
“These sanctions were a severe and blatant foreign intervention in Israel’s internal affairs and an unjustified violation of democratic principles and the mutual respect that should guide relations between friendly nations,” Smotrich wrote. “Mr. President, your unwavering and uncompromising support for the State of Israel is a testament to your deep connection to the Jewish people and our historical right to our land.”
Itamar Ben-Gvir, the former Israeli national security minister, additionally celebrated the rescinding of Biden’s order, writing that he welcomed the “historic decision of incoming US President Donald Trump to lift the sanctions imposed by the Biden administration on the settlers of Judea and Samaria [also known as the West Bank]. This is a righting of an injustice of many years, in which distorted policies were pursued by the American administration and also by local elements who confused lovers with enemies.”
Trump also signed an order on Monday declaring a goal of “reevaluating and realigning foreign aid,” a move which will impact support for Palestinians.
The order stated that “the United States foreign aid industry and bureaucracy are not aligned with American interests and in many cases antithetical to American values. They serve to destabilize world peace by promoting ideas in foreign countries that are directly inverse to harmonious and stable relations internal to and among countries.”
Trump’s decision will result in a 90-day suspension of all foreign aid in order to conduct an “assessment of programmatic efficiencies and consistency with United States foreign policy.”
The move puts a hold on a Biden administration decision from November which would provide $230 million to Palestinians. Amy Tohill-Stull, the West Bank and Gaza mission director at the US Agency for International Development (USAID), said at the time that “our commitment to the Palestinian people remains steadfast” and that “this funding demonstrates our resolve to support sustainable development and provide essential services that enhance the quality of life for all Palestinians and further reduce the influence of Hamas.”
Newly confirmed US Secretary of State Marco Rubio will lead efforts to determine which foreign aid qualifies as in alignment with the administration’s foreign policy objectives. At his confirmation hearing last week, he said that “every dollar we spend, every program we fund, and every policy we pursue must be justified with the answer to three simple questions: Does it make America safer? Does it make America stronger? Does it make America more prosperous?”
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