Bank Leumi today (Sunday) froze the two accounts of Yanon Levy, a resident of South Mount Hebron who was on the American sanctions list following attacks on Palestinians. According to sources in the banking field, Bank Hapoalim also has two clients on whom sanctions have been imposed.
Last Thursday, the Biden administration published a list of sanctions against four Israeli settlers who behaved violently in the West Bank against the Palestinians living in the villages in the area: Einan Tanjil, David Chai Hasdai, Shalom Zicherman and Levy.
Finance Minister Smotrich is trying to stop the bank's move.
Smotrich spoke today with the supervisor of the banks and told him: "It is unacceptable for an Israeli citizen to have his money frozen on an American order, we are not a subsidiary country of the USA." According to his associates, the supervisor of banks will look into the matter and return to it.
It should be noted that the Israeli banks are in a complex situation, between a rock and a hard place.
On the one hand, the Minister of Finance opposes freezing the accounts of the settlers.
On the other hand, disobeying the American sanctions may also harm the banks themselves - and thus also the Israeli economy.
Clashes in the area of the village of Saviya // Photo: Arab Networks
The minister wrote a few days ago on his X account in response to the very imposition of the American sanctions that "the 'settler violence' campaign is an anti-Semitic lie spread by the enemies of Israel with the aim of discrediting the pioneer settlers and the settlement enterprise and harming them, thereby discrediting Israel as a whole. This is an anti-moral BDS campaign , which turns the victim into an attacker and allows the blood of the settlers."
Bank Hapoalim said that "the bank respects the international sanctions and will comply with any legal order. For reasons of banking confidentiality, we cannot refer to specific cases."
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