Advocates for Palestinian rights are criticizing the Biden administration after it announced that it is issuing sanctions against settler groups and individuals responsible for carrying out violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank — but is not meting out any punishment for the top Israeli officials who are organizing and funding the settler attacks.

On Monday, the Treasury Department announced that it is sanctioning Amana, which officials said is the largest company involved in settlement and outpost development in the occupied West Bank and plays a key role in the Israeli settlement movement.

Concurrently, the State Department announced that it is sanctioning three companies and individuals involved in building settlements or committing violence against Palestinians, including construction company Eyal Hari Yehuda and owner Itamar Yehuda Levi; Shabtai Koshlevsky, a leader of a group previously sanctioned for violent land theft; and Zohar Sabah, who has “engaged in threats and acts of violence against Palestinians,” including in an attack on an elementary school in September.

“The United States, along with our allies and partners, remains committed to holding accountable those who seek to facilitate these destabilizing activities, which threaten the stability of the West Bank, Israel, and the wider region,” said Deputy Secretary of the Treasury, Wally Adeyemo, in a statement.

The sanctions were carried out as part of a Biden executive order calling for sanctions on those threatening safety in the West Bank, as international bodies have said that Israel’s settlement movement in the West Bank violates international humanitarian law.

Though the sanctions may ease some of the fierce violence and repression faced by Palestinians in the West Bank, which Israelis have escalated amid the genocide in Gaza, advocates for Palestinian rights have said that the........

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