Settler sanctions are theatre. Hathaleen's murder exposes the cover-up

Al Jazeera

4 days ago

On July 28, 2025, an Israeli settler shot Palestinian activist Awdah Hathaleen in the chest, causing injuries that later proved fatal. The attack was captured on video, and the shooter was identified as Yinon Levi, a settler previously sanctioned by the European Union, the United Kingdom and the United States under the Biden administration.
Hathaleen, aged 31, was a beloved activist and teacher from Masafer Yatta in the South Hebron Hills. He also played a supporting role in the Oscar-winning film No Other Land, which depicts the story of his village, subjected to relentless attacks from settlers and settler-aligned soldiers for decades.
Hathaleen's killing is far from isolated. He is one of more than 1,000 Palestinians killed in the West Bank since the genocide in Gaza began in October 2023. This surge in violence coincides with a sharp rise in Palestinian land seizures and home demolitions. The Israeli government has used the genocide in Gaza as cover to accelerate its takeover plans for the West Bank. Just days before entering its three-month summer recess, the Israeli Knesset passed a non-binding motion to annex the entire territory.
The Knesset's motion comes one year after the July 2024 International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling that Israel's ongoing occupation of the Palestinian territories it seized in 1967 is illegal and must end. The court ordered the Israeli regime to dismantle settlements, provide reparations and facilitate the return of displaced Palestinians, setting September 2025 as the deadline.
In the months leading up to the ICJ ruling, countries including Australia, France, the UK and Canada announced sanctions on a handful of settlers and entities involved in the settlement enterprise. Hathaleen's killer, Yinon Levi, was among those sanctioned. Yet, as expected, travel bans and financial restrictions imposed by these countries have had no impact on the ground. Levi continued his attacks on Palestinians from his illegal settler outpost, operating under full army protection.
Not only have these sanctions had no impact, but by singling out a few settlers rather than addressing the broader machinery of settler colonialism, they also allow the Israeli regime to escape accountability by presenting settler violence as an aberration rather than an extension of state policy.
By deliberately distinguishing between 'extremist' settlers and the rest of the Israeli regime, states implement token measures that enable them to posture as defenders of international law while avoiding any confrontation with the regime itself.
The reality is that Israel operates as a settlement enterprise, and its state policy has always been to expand its territory across all of Historical Palestine and beyond, as demonstrated by the occupation of parts of southern Syria and Lebanon over the last two years.
Today, more than 700,000 settlers reside in the West Bank and East Jerusalem across more than 250 settlements and outposts, all of which violate international law and are sustained by state infrastructure, security forces and planning agencies. This expansion has been enabled by hollow measures such as the sanctioning of Levi, where targeting a few individuals serves only to shield the regime responsible for the very system they uphold.
This political theatre is utterly absurd. One cannot meaningfully sanction settler violence while maintaining full diplomatic, economic and military support for a regime that is, by definition, a settler regime. The settler and the state are inseparable. To sanction one while legitimising the other is not accountability; it is complicity. Hathaleen's murder is not an anomaly but the direct outcome of this system, one that is protected, financed and excused by the same states that claim to oppose it. Such actions do not challenge the status quo; they entrench and normalise it. Breaking this cycle requires states to end their support for Israel's genocidal regime of settlement and occupation altogether, through comprehensive sanctions and real accountability that targets the system, not just its murderous foot soldiers.
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial stance.