Canada sanctions Israeli settlers as attacks on Palestinians soar in West Bank

The Canadian government has imposed sanctions on four Israeli extremist settlers over their involvement in violent attacks against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.

Canada’s Global Affairs ministry announced the sanctions in a Thursday press release, saying that the bans were regarded as “a significant step in Canada’s response to this ongoing violence” since the listed settlers “have engaged directly or indirectly in violence and violent acts against Palestinian civilians and their property.”

Stressing that the sanctions had targeted David Chai Chasdai, Yinon Levi, Zvi Bar Yosef and Moshe Sharvit under Canada’s Special Economic Measures Act, the statement said, “These measures will impose a prohibition on dealings related to the listed individuals and also render them inadmissible to Canada under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.”

The ministry voiced concern over Israeli settlers’ violence and vowed that Ottawa 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.”

Describing attacks by extremist Israeli settlers as a long-standing source of tension and conflict in the region, the statement said the violence has escalated alarmingly in recent months and, “This has undermined the human rights of Palestinians, the prospects for a two-state solution and posed significant risks to regional security.”

The ministry pointed to a United Nations’ report on at least 800 settler attacks against Palestinians since October 7 last year, saying, “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.”

Ottawa further claimed that it “continues to oppose the expansion of illegal settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem [al-Quds] and is committed to a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East.”

Two Palestinians killed in West Bank amid drastic rise in settler attacks

The Palestinian Red Crescent says Israeli settlers shooy dead two Palestinians in a clash near the northern West Bank village of Aqrabah.

Some 700,000 Israelis live in roughly 300 settlements built since the 1967 Israeli occupation of the West Bank and East al-Quds, with the international community viewing the settlements as illegal under international law and the Geneva Conventions due to their construction on the occupied territories.

The Palestinian Wall and Settlements Resistance Commission said in a recent statistical report that the Israeli occupation forces and extremist settlers carried out a total of 12,161 attacks against Palestinians and their properties in the West Bank in 2023.

Israel has ramped up its aggression in the West Bank since its incessant bombardment of the besieged Gaza Strip began in early October last year.

Since the start of Israel’s bloody campaign in Gaza, over 450 Palestinians have been killed and around 5,000 others wounded by the occupying forces in the West Bank, the Palestinian Health Ministry says.

Israel unleashed the Gaza onslaught on October 7 after the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas carried out Operation al-Aqsa Storm against the occupying entity in retaliation for its intensified atrocities against the Palestinian people.

The Tel Aviv regime has so far killed at least 35,303  Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injured 79,261 others, according to the Gaza-based health ministry update on Friday. 

The occupying entity has also imposed a “complete siege” on the territory, cutting off fuel, electricity, food, and water to the more than two million Palestinians living there.

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