[IMPORTANT] Hamas launches foot assault against settlements.

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President Biden on Thursday issued an executive order that targets Israeli settlers in the West Bank who have been attacking Palestinians in the occupied territory, imposing financial sanctions and visa bans in an initial round against four individuals.

The order authorizes sanctions against those involved in acts of violence in the West Bank, as well as threats and attempts to destroy or seize Palestinian property. The penalties block them from using the U.S. financial system and bar American citizens from dealing with them.

The State Department identified the four individuals hit with sanctions as Israeli settlers who have attacked Palestinians in the past. U.S. officials said they were evaluating whether to punish others involved in attacks that have intensified during the Israel-Hamas war.

Palestinian authorities say some Palestinians have been killed, and rights groups say settlers have torched cars and attacked several small Bedouin communities, forcing evacuations.

"These actions 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," Mr. Biden said in the order. "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."

Mr. Biden has spoken out against retaliatory attacks by Israeli settlers and pledged that those those responsible for the violence will be held accountable. He said in late October that the violence by "extremist settlers" amounted to "pouring gasoline" on the already burning fires in the Middle East. "It has to stop. They have to be held accountable. It has to stop now," Mr. Biden said.

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan met on Wednesday at the White House with Ron Dermer, Israel's minister of strategic affairs. U.S. officials said the Israeli government was notified in advance of the sanctions.

The order gives the Treasury Department the authority to impose financial sanctions on settlers engaged in violence, but is not meant to target U.S. citizens. A substantial number of the settlers in the West Bank hold U.S. citizenship, and they would be prohibited under U.S. law from transacting with the sanctioned individuals.

U.S. lawmakers have zeroed in on the role of Americans or dual citizens in the settler violence and intimidation. In a letter last month, Sen. Ben Cardin, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, asked the White House to take action against any U.S. citizens involved in attacks against Palestinians. He said that could include criminal charges and financial sanctions.

"There's got to be a strong message against the extreme activities taken by some settlers on the West Bank, jeopardizing the lives of Palestinians as well as the peace in the region," Cardin, a Democrat from Maryland, told reporters Thursday.

Officials said there are no plans to penalize far-right Israeli ministers who have defended the violence by Israeli settlers and have called for the expansion of settlements.

The new executive order comes as Mr. Biden was set to visit Michigan on Thursday to rally support from union members in a key presidential battleground state. The Democratic president has faced sharp criticism from Arab and Muslim leaders over his handling of the war with Hamas, and the shadow of the conflict has some Democrats worrying that it could have a major effect on the outcome in the November election.

The president's campaign team has already seen alarming signs of the growing rift with Michigan's Arab American community.

Last week, the president's campaign manager, Julie Chavez Rodriguez traveled to suburban Detroit and found a number of community leaders unwilling to meet with her. Some frustrated by Mr. Biden's Israel policy are working to discourage voters from supporting the president in the general election.

The State Department announced in December it would impose travel bans on extremist Jewish settlers implicated in a rash of recent attacks on Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.

US President Joe Biden’s administration is homing in on a new doctrine involving an unprecedented push to immediately advance the creation of a demilitarized but viable Palestinian state, The New York Times’ Thomas Friedman reported on Thursday.

The plan, Friedman wrote, “would involve some form of US recognition of a demilitarized Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip that would come into being only once Palestinians had developed a set of defined, credible institutions and security capabilities to ensure that this state was viable and that it could never threaten Israel.”

White House officials “have been consulting experts inside and outside the US government about different forms this recognition of Palestinian statehood might take,” revealed Friedman.

What he termed the new “Biden Doctrine” would include boosting US ties with Saudi Arabia alongside a normalization of ties between Riyadh and Jerusalem, and maintaining a tough military stance against Iran and its proxies.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman told US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in January that he was prepared to normalize relations with Israel as part of rebuilding the Gaza Strip after the war, two US officials relayed to The Times of Israel, noting that he indeed is conditioning that deal on Israeli steps toward Palestinian sovereignty.

Hamas’s mass onslaught in Israel is “forcing a fundamental rethinking about the Middle East within the Biden administration,” Friedman wrote.

“If the administration can pull this together — a huge if — a Biden Doctrine could become the biggest strategic realignment in the region since the 1979 Camp David treaty,” he contended.

Friedman, who is close to Biden and has disseminated messages to Israel through his column recently, argued that the emerging doctrine would include a stepped-up US campaign against Iran, including a firm military response to the death of three American soldiers this week.

He also maintained that Israel is losing the war in Gaza because of the damage it has suffered on the global stage and the fact that it doesn’t have a realistic plan for who rules the Strip after the military campaign.

Friedman’s column comes a day after a report in Axios, which cites two officials, saying that Blinken had asked the State Department to review the policy options available to the US on the issue of a Palestinian state and present them for discussion.


In recent weeks, Netanyahu has drawn global condemnation — and defied the United States, which provides Israel with billions of dollars in military aid — by ostensibly rejecting calls for a Palestinian state.

Netanyahu appears to have been careful, though, not to categorically reject all forms of Palestinian statehood.

His comments came after an NBC report that the Biden administration was looking past the premier to advance a two-state solution — and hours after Blinken said Israel cannot achieve “genuine security” without a pathway to a Palestinian state.

The two leaders spoke by phone that same week, and afterward Biden expressed hope that a two-state solution could be achieved even with Netanyahu in office if the Palestinian state is demilitarized. A CNN report the next day indicated that Netanyahu told Biden that he was not ruling out a Palestinian state entirely.

The Wall Street Journal also reported that the US, Egypt and Qatar are pushing Israel and Hamas to accept a comprehensive plan that would end the war, see the release of hostages held in Gaza, and ultimately lead to full normalization for Israel with its neighbors and talks for the establishment of a Palestinian state.

Protesters blocked trucks carrying humanitarian supplies to Palestinians in Gaza on Thursday, demanding that no aid be allowed to enter the Strip via Israel while 132 hostages taken captive by terrorists on October 7 remain in captivity.

The protest came days after the IDF designated the areas of both the Kerem Shalom and the Nitzana border crossings as closed military zones to prevent disruptions. Large groups of activists, including some families of hostages being held by Hamas in Gaza, protested daily at the crossing last week.

Photos and videos circulating on social media on Thursday morning showed protesters arguing with truck drivers and attempting to check their loads to see which were headed for Gaza.

Likud activist Orly Lev posted a photo from the protest on X, formerly Twitter, with the caption, “Now at the Ashdod Port, blocking aid to Nazis.”

Ultranationalist MK and radical settlement activist Tzvi Succot also attended the protest, according to Channel 12 news.

From Above quote / report .
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government does not support the immediate discontinuation of UNRWA, a senior Israeli official said on Tuesday as a host of Western countries moved to suspend funding for the UN relief agency for Palestinians amid allegations that roughly a dozen of its employees took part in Hamas’s October 7 terror onslaught and hundreds more are either operatives or have close ties with members.

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quote="ASPartOfMe"]Activists block Gaza aid trucks at Ashdod Port after being barred from border by IDF


?????????????????? ?........?......???????????.?..........
How does one resolve the differences between these two reports please ???. As UNRWA is the humanitarian aide and support for Palestinians ???. And the IDF is the Iraeli's Military , and blocking the aide trucks ..

[ This does Not paint Netenyahu as a particularily honest speaker , from reading these things ]
Think back to USA s President Clintons impeachment / resignation . And he was not responsible for another Countries people dying , ( as best as I recall )

https://today.lorientlejour.com/article/1366765/belgium-summons-israeli-ambassador-after-its-building-in-gaza-is-bombed.html

Those protesters should not not be allowed to block those trucks, they could find themselves in prison.

The United States launched attacks Friday against 85 sites in Iraq and Syria used by Iranian forces and Iran-backed militants, its first retaliatory strikes for the killing of three American soldiers in Jordan last weekend, U.S. officials said.

U.S. military forces struck targets at seven facilities tied to attacks on U.S. personnel in the region, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters. U.S. Central Command said the facilities included command and control operations, intelligence centers, rockets and missiles, and drone storage sites.

“Our response began today. It will continue at times and places of our choosing,” President Joe Biden said in a statement. “The United States does not seek conflict in the Middle East or anywhere else in the world. But let all those who might seek to do us harm know this: If you harm an American, we will respond.”

The military action is a significant escalation in Washington’s bid to deter the growing threat from Iran-backed groups across the Middle East — a step fraught with risk abroad and at home, as Biden seeks to prevent the Israel-Hamas war from spiraling into a wider conflict while working to secure his re-election.

yrian state television reported that the strikes killed and wounded people, but it did not specify an exact number of casualties.

Kirby said the U.S. did not know how many militants were killed or wounded, but said the targets were selected to avoid civilian casualties.

The targets were “based on a clear, irrefutable evidence they were connected to attacks on U.S personnel in the region,” he said.

The U.S. conducted the strikes knowing that the facilities are used by Iranian-backed militia personnel and Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, Lt. Gen. Douglas A. Sims II told reporters.

“We made these strikes tonight with an idea that there would likely be casualties associated with people inside those facilities,” he said.

The U.S. used more than 125 munitions on the strikes, Sims said. He said all of them were precision munitions.

The Iraqi army condemned the U.S. airstrikes against Iran-backed militias in Iraqi border areas, calling the air assault a “violation of Iraqi sovereignty” and “a threat that will drag Iraq and the region into unforeseen consequences.”

Yahya Rasool Abdullah, a spokesman for the commander-in-chief of the Iraqi Armed Forces, asserted that the “strikes come at a time when Iraq is striving to ensure the stability of the region.”

Kirby, the National Security Council spokesman, told reporters that the U.S. informed the Iraqi government about the strikes before they were launched.

Biden seeks to deter widening conflict
Even as Biden and his deputies vowed to retaliate, they have added the caveat that Washington does not seek a war with Iran or a wider conflict in the region, a sentiment that was reiterated in the president’s statement on Friday. Their calibrated statements appeared to indicate that it was unlikely the reprisal strikes would hit targets inside Iran itself

“We will continue to work to avoid a wider conflict in a region, but we will take all necessary actions to defend the United States, our interests and our people,” Austin told reporters at a Pentagon news conference Thursday.

Austin repeated much of that statement on Friday after the strikes, adding in part that “the president and I will not tolerate attacks on American forces.”

Iran has denied involvement in the drone attack and said that it, too, does not seek a direct confrontation with the U.S.

U.S. Navy warships have shot down dozens of the Houthi drones and missiles, but some have hit commercial vessels, prompting a slew of major shipping companies to shift cargo onto other, longer routes. In recent weeks, the U.S. military also carried out strikes against Houthi forces in Yemen, hitting launch sites and command centers.

It’s unclear if the Biden administration will choose to go after Iranian ships suspected of assisting the Houthis to find targets with electronic intelligence.

The last time the U.S. military targeted an Iranian ship was in 1988, when the Navy launched retaliatory attacks in the Persian Gulf after an American vessel was hit by a mine planted by Iran.

Tehran has denied direct involvement in the Jordan incident but has warned that it will respond to any threat from the U.S.

“We will not start any war, but if anyone wants to bully us, they will receive a strong response,” Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi said in a televised speech Friday.

“We hear threats coming from American officials, we tell them that they have already tested us and we now know one another, no threat will be left unanswered,” the chief of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, Hossein Salami, said Wednesday.

Events that Smotrich calls an anti-Semitic lie:
Ras El Ein, south of the Jordan Valley, on the holy Sabbath and with white shirts, armed settlers, invading the barn with the aim of stealing and looting the sheep of the Palestinian shepherds community. With the knowledge and under the auspices of the security forces who were informed, but did not prevent.
Settlers terror is not a campaign. It is a daily reality.

This is why I consider settlers to be legitimate targets.

Kirby said the U.S. did not know how many militants were killed or wounded, but said the targets were selected to avoid civilian casualties.

An IDF psychological warfare unit ran a Telegram channel targeting Israeli audience without approval. The army initially denied involvement, but an internal investigation following Haaretz exposé revealed its involvement

The Telegram channel is called “72 Virgins— Uncensored”. It posts videos and pictures from both inside Gaza and Israel, and they’re all disturbing. The videos show things like the dead bodies of militants and purported militants, and Palestinian bodies being run over. Photos of Palestinian men detained in Gaza were captioned “Exterminating the roaches”, a phrasing which definitely doesn’t sound at all like the Rwandan Genocide or anything. The channel also posted video of right wing Israelis rioting outside a hospital because of rumors Hamas militants were being treated there with the caption “What heroes, they came to screw the Arabs.”

I assume you mean "legitimate targets" you mean armed settlers occupying carrying weapons and not women and children who often don't have a say in what their community has decided?

Women serve in the IDF. Are armed women less legitimate targets merely because of their gender? By choosing to actively participate in the occupation they make themselves combatants and therefore legitimate targets.

According to international law, illegal settlers are not legitimate military targets, sorry. While everyone agrees that the settlements are illegal, the settlers are still considered civilians under international law, so the illegal status does not automatically make them legitimate military targets even though they're illegal.