The lesson is simple: Sanctions are shaped by the names that appear on a government blacklist, but more importantly, by how regulators tell banks and companies to behave afterward. Implementation and enforcement can make or break the policy.
For now, it seems that the danger of escalating too far and too quickly may have been averted, considering London chose a phased rollout. That approach is a marked contrast with sanctions on Russia, where Western governments moved within days to target the core of the Russian financial system and immobilize central-bank assets. The more immediate danger is the reverse: that deliberate sequencing turns into delay, or that sanctions are diluted before they can exert sustained pressure.
Still, sanctions can erode the leverage they depend on.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has openly prepared his country for a more autarkic nation, a “Super-Sparta” capable of surviving greater international isolation. Governments should be careful not to make that vision self-fulfilling, especially as more insulation would weaken the external leverage that can constrain abuses against Palestinians living under occupation.
The costs of the government’s policies should become visible to Israeli society without becoming so sweeping that hardliners can portray permanent isolation as inevitable. If economic pain comes to be seen as indiscriminate, or as permanent regardless of what Israel does, the incentive shifts from changing course to adapting to isolation. Hardliners can then argue that the outside world is hostile no matter what, while the very economic links underpinning the international community’s leverage gradually weaken.
That development is the sanctions trap: mistaking pressure itself for strategy.
The key is to use Israel’s deep ties to the global economy to reshape the calculus sustaining expansionism and other hardline policies, but not to drive the country into isolation. Sanctions should remain tied to the conduct they seek to change, escalating when that conduct continues and preserving meaningful off-ramps when it changes.
Sanctions are leverage, not a comprehensive peace plan or strategy in and of itself. Their purpose is to change incentives and bring conduct into greater conformity with international law and norms.
Done well, sanctions can turn Israel’s international integration into leverage for a just and durable peace. Done too timidly, they will fail to change the calculus. Done indiscriminately, they risk helping hardliners build the very “Super-Sparta” they envision. The point is to make isolation a consequence Israel can still avoid, not a future it learns to survive.
The views and positions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of DAWN.