Washington, DC – A spokesperson for the State Department in the United States has been questioned about the killing of Palestinian activist Awdah Hathaleen, allegedly at the hands of an Israeli settler previously sanctioned by the US government.
At a news briefing on Tuesday, State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce demurred when asked whether the suspect in Hathaleen’s death, Yinon Levi, would be held accountable.
“Israel has investigations that it’s implementing regarding situations of this sort,” Bruce said. “I don’t know the end result of what that’s going to be, nor will I comment or speculate on what should happen.”
Bruce’s tense exchange with reporters came one day after video circulated showing Levi opening fire on Hathaleen in the village of Umm al-Kheir in the occupied West Bank.
The 31-year-old Palestinian activist later died from a gunshot wound to his chest.
Levi is among several Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank who were previously sanctioned under the former administration of US President Joe Biden for perpetrating violence against Palestinians.
But President Donald Trump reversed those sanctions in an executive order shortly after taking office for a second term in January. The United Kingdom and the European Union, however, maintain sanctions against Levi.
Hathaleen, a resident of Masafer Yatta, had helped create the Academy Award-winning documentary No Other Land, which captured the effects of Israeli settlements, which are illegal under international law, and attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank.
In Tuesday’s news briefing, Bruce appeared to suggest that Hathaleen’s shooting happened in the “war zone” of Gaza, before being corrected.
Still, she maintained that the Trump administration sought to address violence wherever it occurred.
“It’s the same argument. We see this in the West Bank. We know when there’s violence in general. We saw something unfold in New York City as well, with a shooting in New York City yesterday,” she said, in an apparent reference to an unrelated shooting in a Manhattan skyscraper.
The State Department did not respond to a subsequent request from Al Jazeera about whether the Trump administration would revisit its sanctions policy in light of the killing.
On Tuesday, Israeli media reported that Levi had been placed on house arrest after being charged with manslaughter and unlawful firearm use.
Illegal settlements and Trump
Hathaleen was a father of three who coordinated with several influential advocacy and lobbying groups in the US, and his death has renewed scrutiny of Trump’s policies towards illegal Israeli settlements in occupied territories like the West Bank.
During his first term, Trump reversed a longstanding policy recognising such settlements as illegal. Such settlements are in violation of international law and widely seen as a means of displacing Palestinians and seizing their lands.
But Israeli settlements have continued to spread rapidly in recent years and are seen as a major roadblock to future peace agreements with Palestinian leaders.
Upon taking office earlier this year, Trump revoked many Biden-era executive orders, including the sanctions against Israeli settlers. The move reportedly came amid pressure from the Israeli government under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
During his term, Biden had been criticised for continuing to funnel aid to Israel amid its war in Gaza, but his administration showed a willingness to take a harder line when it came to settlements in the occupied West Bank.
“The situation in the West Bank — in particular high levels of extremist settler violence, forced displacement of people and villages, and property destruction — has reached intolerable levels,” Biden’s executive order, dated February 2024, said.
It added that Israeli actions in the West Bank constitute “a serious threat to the peace, security, and stability of the West Bank and Gaza, Israel, and the broader Middle East region”.
Violence on the part of Israeli settlers and military forces has surged since Israel’s war in Gaza began on October 7, 2023, with at least 1,000 Palestinians killed in the West Bank.
Rights observers say violent settlers are often protected by the military as they attack Palestinians.
Those killed have included US citizens, most recently Sayfollah Musallet, a 20-year-old resident of Florida, beaten to death while visiting his family’s land in the village of Sinjil.
In a rare statement condemning Musallet’s killing, US ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, a vocal supporter of Israeli settlements, called on the country to “aggressively investigate” what he called a “criminal and terrorist act”.
To date, no one has been arrested or charged in the killing.
In a statement following Monday’s attack, J Street, a left-leaning pro-Israel lobbying group, called on US lawmakers to support legislation that would codify the Biden-era sanctions against settlers like Levi.
The group explained that its members had “deep, personal ties” to Hathaleen, and said they were “heartbroken and horrified” by his killing.
In a post on the social media platform X on Tuesday, Congress member Delia Ramirez called Hathaleen’s killing “a painful reminder that our government and Israel continue to enable and condone violence in the West Bank”.
“We must reinstate the sanctions on West Bank settlers perpetrating violence and hold accountable all those whose extreme and escalating violence continues to rob us of our neighbors — including Trump and Netanyahu,” she wrote.
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