The government of the United States of America is considering sanctions against a unit of the Israeli army (IDF), the Netza Yehuda battalion, which has been accused of serious human rights violations several times, the Guardian writes based on Israeli media outlets, which officials of the US State Department confirmed that sanctions are being prepared for introduction.
This would be the first time that the US government targets an IDF unit, and according to Haaretz’s report on Sunday, the US leader is considering similar actions against other Israeli police and military units. Members of the Netanyahu government were outraged by the planned move. “The IDF must not be sanctioned!” – the Israeli Prime Minister wrote on X. “For the past few weeks, I have been working against sanctions against Israeli citizens, including through my conversations with the US administration. (..) At a time when our soldiers are fighting terrorist monsters, imposing sanctions on a unit of the IDF is the height of absurdity and the moral low point,” he wrote in his post. Benny Gantz, a member of Netanyahu’s war cabinet, also stood up for the battalion: “The Netza Yehuda battalion is an inseparable part of the Israel Defense Forces,” he posted, adding that the unit operates in compliance with international law.
The U.S. would impose the sanctions under the 1997 Leahy Act, which would bar the unit from receiving U.S. military aid until it is withdrawn, and prohibiting its soldiers and officers from participating in training funded by the U.S. military.
The sanctions plan was made public after Israeli airstrikes on the town of Rafah in the southern part of the Gaza Strip on Saturday night killed 18 people, including 14 children, according to Gaza health officials.
The Netzah Yehuda Battalion, which is part of the Kfir Brigade, was recruited in 1999 from ultra-Orthodox and national religious communities, including young members of extremist settler groups, and was previously deployed primarily in the West Bank, which is partially occupied by Israel. The unit was already at odds with the US in 2022, when its soldiers were accused of the death of Omar Assad, a 78-year-old American citizen. The man died of a heart attack after he was allegedly captured, bound, gagged and left alone by members of the battalion. After the incident, the US State Department demanded a criminal investigation.
Netzah Yehuda was later redeployed from the West Bank to northern Israel and was also deployed in the Gaza Strip. ProPublica reported last week that the US State Department received a dossier in December detailing violations of the Leahy Act.
This would not be the first in a series of countermeasures that Israel has recently faced from its allies following the war in Gaza and the actions in the West Bank. On Friday, both the United States and the EU announced sanctions against far-right Israeli groups, NGOs, and high-ranking individuals related to settler violence. Bentzi Gopstein, a close political ally of Israel’s far-right national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, is among those sanctioned.
Regardless of the sanctions plans, the US Congress voted for the HUF 9,000 billion aid package to be given to Israel.
