OTTAWA, Friday, May 17, 2024 (WAFA) – Canada Thursday imposed sanctions on four Israeli colonists involved in attacks against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.
Canada’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mélanie Joly, announced in a press release that Canada imposed new sanction measures on the four Israeli colonists under the Special Economic Measures Act, namely David Chai Chasdai, Yinon Levi, Zvi Bar Yosef and Moshe Sharvit.
Joly considered the sanctions “a significant step in Canada’s response to this ongoing violence”, as she noted that the above-listed colonists “have engaged directly or indirectly in violence and violent acts against Palestinian civilians and their property.”
She added: “These measures will impose a prohibition on dealings related to the listed individuals and render them inadmissible to Canada under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.”
She voiced her country’s concern with Israeli colonist violence and vowed that Canda would “examine additional measures in response to the grave breach of international peace and security posed by their violent and destabilizing actions against Palestinian civilians and their property in the West Bank.”
“Attacks by extremist Israeli settlers—a long-standing source of tension and conflict in the region—have escalated alarmingly in recent months. This has undermined the human rights of Palestinians, ]the[ prospects for a 2-state solution and posed significant risks to regional security,” she stressed.
The statement recalled that the United Nations (UN) has reported that since October 7, 2023, there have been at least 800 colonist attacks against Palestinians. “Many Palestinian civilians have been verbally or physically assaulted or killed; private property has been damaged and farms destroyed. These attacks have resulted in the forced displacement of Palestinian communities and significantly contributed to growing regional insecurity.”
Joly reiterated that her country “continues to oppose the expansion of illegal settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and is committed to a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East.”
Statistics of the Wall and Settlement Commission show that during 2023, Israeli occupation forces and colonist militias carried out 12,161 attacks against Palestinians and their properties in the West Bank, including 9,751 attacks carried out by the occupation forces and 2,410 attacks carried out by colonists militias and mobs in addition to 206 jointly carried attacks.
Other countries, including the US, France and the UK, followed suit, imposing new sanctions on far-right Israeli colonists over their involvement in violence in the occupied West Bank.
Although the US has moved to sanction some Israelis involved in violence in the West Bank, it has otherwise resisted calls to impose penalties on other Israeli bodies or individuals.
Palestinians have viewed US sanctions against colonists as an apparent attempt to divert attention from its complicity in Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.
These sanctions falsely convey the impression that colonist violence is caused by a few bad apples, and sidestep the reality that Israel’s illegal state-directed policy of settler colonisalism is inherently violent. The colonists are not acting as individuals but on behalf of the state whose goal is the theft and total control of all the land in the West Bank.
T.R./ K.F.
