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Australia Imposes Sanctions on Israeli Youth Group, Settlers over West Bank Violence

FILE Photo: Australian Federal Police officers detain a suspect in Sydney - AFP
FILE Photo: Australian Federal Police officers detain a suspect in Sydney - AFP
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Australia Imposes Sanctions on Israeli Youth Group, Settlers over West Bank Violence

FILE Photo: Australian Federal Police officers detain a suspect in Sydney - AFP
FILE Photo: Australian Federal Police officers detain a suspect in Sydney - AFP

Australia on Thursday imposed financial sanctions and travel bans on seven Israeli settlers and a youth group it said had been involved in violence against Palestinians in the West Bank.

The group was responsible for inciting and perpetrating violence against Palestinians, while the settlers had been involved in beatings, sexual assault and torture and in some cases death, Foreign Minister Penny Wong said in a statement.

"We call on Israel to hold perpetrators of settler violence to account and to cease its ongoing settlement activity, which only inflames tensions and further undermines stability and prospects for a two-state solution," Wong said, Reuters reported.

The move by the Australian government comes after allies Britain, the United States, Canada and Japan sanctioned some Israeli settlers in response to the violence in the West Bank.

Violent acts by some Israeli settlers in the West Bank have increased amid Israel's war in Gaza, sparked by an attack on Israel by Palestinian militant group Hamas on Oct. 7.

Since the 1967 Middle East war, Israel has occupied the West Bank of the Jordan River which Palestinians want as the core of an independent state. It has built Jewish settlements there that most countries deem illegal but Israel disputes this and cites historical and Biblical ties to the land.

Australia considers Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian Territories illegal and an obstacle to peace.

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Rutte: Russian Victory Over Ukraine Would Have Costly Impact on NATO's Credibility

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte gives a joint press conference with Finland's president and Estonia's prime minister during the Baltic Sea NATO Allies Summit in Helsinki, Finland, 14 January 2025. EPA/KIMMO BRANDT
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte gives a joint press conference with Finland's president and Estonia's prime minister during the Baltic Sea NATO Allies Summit in Helsinki, Finland, 14 January 2025. EPA/KIMMO BRANDT
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Rutte: Russian Victory Over Ukraine Would Have Costly Impact on NATO's Credibility

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte gives a joint press conference with Finland's president and Estonia's prime minister during the Baltic Sea NATO Allies Summit in Helsinki, Finland, 14 January 2025. EPA/KIMMO BRANDT
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte gives a joint press conference with Finland's president and Estonia's prime minister during the Baltic Sea NATO Allies Summit in Helsinki, Finland, 14 January 2025. EPA/KIMMO BRANDT

NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte warned on Thursday that a Russian victory over Ukraine would undermine the dissuasive force of the world’s biggest military alliance and that its credibility could cost trillions to restore.
NATO has been ramping up its forces along its eastern flank with Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, deploying thousands of troops and equipment to deter Moscow from expanding its war into the territory of any of the organization’s 32 member countries.
“If Ukraine loses then to restore the deterrence of the rest of NATO again, it will be a much, much higher price than what we are contemplating at this moment in terms of ramping up our spending and ramping up our industrial production,” the Associated Press quoted Rutte as saying.
“It will not be billions extra; it will be trillions extra,” he said, on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
Rutte insisted that Ukraine’s Western backers must “step up and not scale back the support” they are providing to the country, almost three years after Russia’s full-fledged invasion began.
“We have to change the trajectory of the war,” Rutte said, adding that the West “cannot allow in the 21st century that one country invades another country and tries to colonize it."
"We are beyond those days,” he said.
Anxiety in Europe is mounting that US President Donald Trump might seek to quickly end the war in talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin on terms that are unfavorable to Ukraine, but Rutte appeared wary about trying to do things in a hurry.
“If we got a bad deal, it would only mean that we will see the president of Russia high-fiving with the leaders from North Korea, Iran and China and we cannot accept that,” the former Dutch prime minister said. “That would be geopolitically a big, big mistake.”
Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski welcomed Trump's acknowledgement that it must be Russia which should make the first peace moves, but he cautioned that “this is not the Putin that President Trump knew in his first term.”
On Wednesday, Trump threatened to impose stiff taxes, tariffs and sanctions on Moscow if an agreement isn’t reached to end the war, but that warning will probably fall on deaf ears in the Kremlin. Russia's economy is already weighed down by a multitude of US and European sanctions.
Sikorksi warned that Putin should not be put at the center of the world stage over Ukraine.
“The president of the United States is the leader of the free world. Vladimir Putin is an outcast and an indicted war criminal for stealing Ukrainian children,” Sikorski said.
"I would suggest that Putin has to earn the summit, that if he gets it early, it elevates him beyond his, significance and gives him the wrong idea about the trajectory of this,” he said.