The U.S. State Department is sanctioning the Palestinian terrorist group Lions’ Den, Foggy Bottom announced on Thursday.
The department called the group, which Washington does not designate as a foreign terrorist organization, “a militant Palestinian group centered in Nablus’s Old City in the West Bank.”
Matthew Miller, the State Department spokesman, noted that Lions’ Den claimed responsibility for “several” drive-by shootings in the area of Nablus in October 2022.
“Lions’ Den members opened fire at Israeli vehicles driving close to the nearby settlement of Elon Moreh, injuring a taxi driver and damaging vehicles,” Miller added. “In a separate attack, numerous shots were fired toward the West Bank settlement of Har Bracha.”
Miller added that Lions’ Den “fighters” hurt and killed Palestinian civilians “during clashes between Palestinian fighters and Palestinian Authority security forces in Nablus.”
“In April 2024, Palestinian media reported that Lions’ Den fighters targeted Israeli forces with small arms at an Israeli checkpoint in Nablus,” he added.
Miller did not say why Washington was sanctioning the group in June when the department cited attacks dating back to October 2022.
“The United States condemns any and all acts of violence committed in the West Bank, whoever the perpetrators, and we will use the tools at our disposal to expose and hold accountable those who threaten peace and stability there,” he said.
U.S. officials in the Biden administration typically use the term “West Bank” to refer to what the Israeli government calls Judea and Samaria—names that date back to the Bible.
Earlier in the day, the Associated Press reported that U.S. sanctions of individual Jews in Judea and Samaria amounted, to those sanctioned, to “at most, an annoyance.”