Washington, DC – A spokesperson for the State Department in the United States was asked about the murder of the Palestinian activist Awdah Hathaleen, allegedly in the hands of an Israeli colonist previously sanctioned by the United States government.
During a drop in press on Tuesday, the spokesperson for the State Department, Tammy Bruce, demonstrated when he was asked if the suspect of the death of Hathaleen, Yinon Levi, would be held responsible.
“Israel has investigations that he implements concerning situations of this type,” said Bruce. “I do not know the end result of what it will be, and I will comment or speculate on what should happen.”
The tense exchange of Bruce with the journalists one day came after the broadcast of the video showing the opening fire of Levi on Hathaleen in the village of Umm al-Kheir in occupied West Bank.
The 31 -year -old Palestinian activist later died of a ball injury to his chest.
Levi is one of several Israeli settlers from the occupied West Bank who were previously sanctioned by the former administration of the American president Joe Biden for having perpetrated violence against the Palestinians.
But President Donald Trump reached these sanctions in a decree shortly after taking office for a second term in January. However, the United Kingdom and the European Union maintain sanctions against Levi.
Hathaleen, a resident of Masafer Yatta, had helped to create the award -winning documentary at the Oscars, no other land, which has captured the effects of the Israeli colonies, which are illegal under international law and attacks against the Palestinians in the West Bank.
In the Tuesday press conference, Bruce seemed to suggest that the Hathaleen shooting occurred in the “war zone” of Gaza, before being corrected.
However, she argued that the Trump administration was trying to fight violence wherever it occurred.
“This is the same argument. We see it in the West Bank. We know when there is violence in general. We also saw something going in New York, with a shooting in New York yesterday,” she said, in an apparent reference to an unrelated shooting in a skyscraper from Manhattan.
The State Department did not respond to a subsequent request from Tel Aviv Tribune as to whether the Trump administration would revise its sanctions policy in the light of the murder.
On Tuesday, the Israeli media reported that Levi had been placed under house arrest after being accused of guilty manslaughter and the use of illegal firearms.
Illegal establishments and Trump
Hathaleen was A father of three children who coordinated with several influential advocacy and lobbying groups in the United States, and his death has renewed the meticulous examination of Trump policies towards illegal Israeli establishments in occupied territories such as the West Bank.
During his first mandate, Trump reversed a long -standing policy recognizing colonies as illegal. These colonies are in violation of international law and widely considered as a means of moving the Palestinians and seizing their land.
But the Israeli colonies have continued to spread quickly in recent years and are considered a major obstacle to future peace agreements with Palestinian leaders.
After taking up his duties earlier this year, Trump has revoked many executive decrees from the Biden era, including sanctions against Israeli colonists. This decision would have taken place in the midst of the pressure of the Israeli government under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
During his mandate, Biden had been criticized for continuing to complete an aid to Israel in the midst of his war in Gaza, but his administration showed a desire to take a more difficult line with regard to the colonies in the occupied West Bank.
“The situation in the West Bank – in particular high levels of violence of extremist settlers, the forced displacement of people and villages and the destruction of goods – has reached intolerable levels,” said the executive decree of Biden, dated February 2024.
He added that Israeli actions in the West Bank constitute “a serious threat to peace, security and stability of the West Bank and Gaza, Israel and the wider region of the Middle East”.
The violence on the part of Israeli settlers and military forces has increased since the start of the War of Israel in Gaza on October 7, 2023, with at least 1,000 Palestinians killed in the West Bank.
Observers of rights say that violent settlers are often protected by the military as they attack the Palestinians.
People killed have included American citizens, more recently Sayfollah Musallet, a 20 -year -old resident in Florida, beaten to death during the land of his family in the village of Sinjil.
In a rare declaration condemning the murder of Musallet, the United States ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, a vocal supporter of the Israeli colonies, called on the country to “investigate” what he called a “criminal and terrorist act”.
To date, no one has been arrested or charged in murder.
In a statement after the attack on Monday, J Street, a left-wing pro-Israeli lobbying group, called on US legislators to support legislation that would codify the Biden era sanctions against settlers like Levi.
The group explained that its members had “personal and personal ties” with Hathaleen and said that they had been “broken and horrified” by its murder.
In an article on the social media platform on Tuesday, the member of the Congress Delia Ramirez qualified the murder of Hathaleen “a painful recall that our government and Israel continue to activate and tolerate violence in the West Bank”.
“We must restore the sanctions against the settlers of the West Bank by perpetrating violence and hold responsible for all those whose extreme and growing violence continues to deprive us of our neighbors-including Trump and Netanyahu,” she wrote.