He signed an executive order on Thursday, saying violence had reached “intolerable levels”.
The sanctions will block the individuals from accessing all US property and other assets.
Violence in the West Bank has spiked since Hamas’s 7 October attack on Israel.
It’s optics, which are important. You can’t demand the US unilaterally solve Middle East peace or nothing matters.
And you (not literally you I just mean people) can’t get mad at “hugging Netanyahu” which also did literally nothing in reality, while dismissing this. They’re both optics. Early after Oct 7th Biden wanted to show compassion for Israel after the attack, now he’s showing that the US is not on the same page as Israeli leadership. Probably part of a top-level pressure campaign, starting small with private critiques, then public critiques, then actually sanctioning some extreme people, maybe next he threatens to withhold aid, we don’t know.
You can still argue the process isn’t going fast enough and you want whatever your proposed solution is, but it’s not ‘nothing’ for the same reasons you mentioned in your first paragraphs.
When the house is burning down you don’t start with the garden hose and wait for the structure to be fully engulfed before allowing the fire department to use just one hose. That’s a fine approach for normal diplomatic problems. But the genocide response playbook is very clear. You need to act swiftly and decisively to protect the victim group. They will be dead by the time normal politics ramps up to the levels required to save them.