A US Passport Should Not Shield Violence in the West Bank

In a rare quiet moment inside the resuscitation room at Nasser Hospital in Gaza, I stood beside a young Palestinian man helping us treat waves of wounded children. He worked with calm precision. Focused. Unflinching.

Then he told me about his brother. Beaten nearly to death by Israeli settlers in the West Bank. Not once. Repeatedly. Ribs broken. Face shattered. The attacks ended only when his family fled the land they had farmed for generations.

“They wanted us gone,” he said. Some of the men who carry out this violence hold United States passports.

They live under American law. They vote in American elections. Then they travel abroad and take part in acts that, in any other context, would be recognized without hesitation: assault, arson, organized racial violence. Homes burned. Crops destroyed. Families driven off land.

An American who beats a man because of his ethnicity, drives him from his home, and destroys the means by which his family survives is not transformed into something else by crossing a border.

And then they return. They pass through US customs. They resume their lives. No charges. No investigation. No meaningful consequence.

This is not an abstraction. Human rights organizations, Israeli and international alike, have documented repeated incidents of settler violence in the West Bank: physical attacks on civilians, destruction of agricultural land, the burning of homes and olive groves, often carried out with little immediate accountability.

Some of those involved are Americans. Under US law, citizenship is extraordinarily difficult to revoke. The Supreme Court has made that clear. But citizenship is not the only instrument of accountability, and treating it as such allows something far worse to persist: impunity.

If an American participates in organized violence against civilians abroad, that person should be investigated. If evidence supports it, they should be prosecuted under applicable US law. If their actions meet the threshold of coordinated or systematic violence, then sanctions, asset restrictions, and limits on international travel should follow.

A passport should not function as a safe harbor.

In 2024, the United States took limited steps to sanction individuals and entities linked to settler violence. It was an acknowledgment, however modest, that this problem exists. In early 2025, that framework was dismantled.

The message was clear. Even minimal accountability was negotiable.

Meanwhile, the violence continues. This is where the question becomes unavoidable.

What does it mean for Israel, a country that defines itself as a democracy under law, to tolerate or fail to prevent organized violence by settlers against civilians in the West Bank?

And what does it mean for the United States to allow its own citizens to participate in that violence and return home untouched?

These are not separate questions. They are reflections of the same failure.

An American who beats a man because of his ethnicity, drives him from his home, and destroys the means by which his family survives is not transformed into something else by crossing a border. Geography does not dilute the crime. It only obscures it.

If that same act occurred in the United States, there would be no ambiguity in how it is described or prosecuted.

When it occurs in the West Bank as part of a broader pattern of displacement, it demands the same clarity.

The tools for accountability already exist. Federal statutes governing violent crime, conspiracy, and, in certain cases, war crimes. Sanctions authorities. Civil liability. Immigration and travel restrictions.

What is missing is not law. It is willingness.

Impunity is not an accident here. It is a decision, made repeatedly, on both sides of the ocean.

The man I met in Gaza was not asking for revenge. He was asking for the violence to stop. He was asking for a form of justice that does not end at a checkpoint or a border crossing.

A United States passport should carry weight. It should represent a commitment to law, not an escape from it.

Right now, in too many cases, it does the opposite. And everyone involved knows it.