The Atlantic Council’s recent call for the United States to designate certain Israeli citizens as global terrorists is not a standalone policy proposal. It is a clear example of how one of Washington’s most influential foreign policy institutions manufactures both external pressure on Israel and the political cover its leaders require to implement it.
In a dispatch titled “Israeli settler terrorism demands a tougher US response,” the Atlantic Council argues that a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) designation would give Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu the domestic political cover needed to act against “escalating settler terror” while remaining aligned with President Donald Trump. The piece explicitly highlights Trump’s “enormous credibility with the Israeli public” as granting him “unprecedented leverage over Netanyahu” — leverage that would enable demands previous U.S. administrations could never have made.
However, there is clear policy utility for this move, which Trump would have unique political latitude to pursue. Trump has enormous credibility with the Israeli public, thanks to his role in the return of the hostages that remained in Hamas captivity and his participation in strikes against Iran. He also has unprecedented leverage over Netanyahu and thus would be largely insulated from the political repercussions – both in the United States and Israel – that his predecessors would have faced had they attempted this step.
The timing is difficult to ignore. Within forty-eight hours of the Atlantic Council’s publication, a coordinated domestic campaign amplifying the “Jewish terror” narrative gained immediate traction inside Israel, coinciding with reports of attacks carried out by masked assailants.
While the Atlantic Council presents its proposal as targeting only “violent extremists,” the mechanism it recommends — a sweeping terrorist designation — has repeatedly been used to apply pressure far beyond individual offenders. In practice, it functions as a tool that can be turned against communities as a whole.
Inside the Atlantic Council
The Atlantic Council is not a neutral forum for foreign policy debate. It is one of Washington’s wealthiest and most politically connected think tanks, funded by multinational corporations, foreign governments, and globalist foundations. Its role has long been to police the boundaries of acceptable debate and steer policy consensus on Middle East strategy, international sanctions, and regional order.
When the Council advocates for terrorist designations against Israeli citizens, it is not offering objective security analysis. It is designing a mechanism to allow foreign actors to directly constrain Israeli policy in Judea and Samaria, while simultaneously handing the Israeli prime minister the political protection needed to carry it out.
The Mechanism of Managed Sovereignty
This approach follows a consistent pattern in which external institutions identify a desired geopolitical outcome and then supply the political framing and cover required to make it feasible for Israeli leadership.
For years, policy blueprints from institutions like the Brookings Institution have envisioned giving an Israeli prime minister domestic political capital through a controlled, managed confrontation with Iran. In the same way, the Atlantic Council’s proposal offers the current leadership domestic cover to move against specific elements in Judea and Samaria.
In both cases, the prime minister is positioned as the executor of a policy whose core parameters were drawn elsewhere. This creates the appearance of Israeli strategic autonomy while the fundamental direction remains heavily influenced by Washington-based planning.
The Atlantic Council is remarkably candid about the political utility of its proposal. It notes that the SDGT designation would allow Netanyahu to act while preserving alignment with Trump and sending a reassuring signal to Riyadh regarding “normalization.” Though sold as a security measure, the proposal’s primary value lies in managing both regional diplomacy and domestic Israeli politics.
The Atlantic Council is unusually explicit about one of the main intended beneficiaries of this move. It states that an SDGT designation, when paired with aggressive Israeli action against settlers, would “send an important signal to Riyadh” regarding Washington and Jerusalem’s commitment to advancing normalization with Saudi Arabia. In other words, the proposed terrorist designation is not presented merely as a security tool. It is also framed as a diplomatic signal meant to reassure the Saudis that Israel remains willing to restrain its own citizens in Judea and Samaria in order to keep the normalization track alive.
An SDGT designation would give Netanyahu the political cover to aggressively combat the escalating settler terror threat while sticking close to Trump during this election season. And, it will lower the temperature and lessen the likelihood of a third Intifada, in the service of both Israeli national security and US regional interests. The designation, if coupled with aggressive Israeli action, would also send an important signal to Riyadh of Washington and Jerusalem’s continued commitment to work toward eventual normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia.
This reveals the deeper transactional nature of the proposal. The same mechanism that supplies Netanyahu with domestic political cover to act against certain communities in Judea and Samaria is simultaneously designed to serve Saudi and American interests in maintaining a particular regional order. The price of keeping normalization on track, according to this logic, includes accepting external definitions of who constitutes a threat inside Israeli society — and granting the prime minister the tools to act on those definitions. In this sense, the designation functions as both a stick against certain Israeli citizens and a carrot for Riyadh.
Domestic Resistance Enables External Leverage
The power of this mechanism becomes clearest when one examines the domestic pressure the Israeli leadership actually faces. Far from operating in a vacuum, the prime minister sits atop a narrow and fractious coalition. Powerful factions within that coalition demand expansion in Judea and Samaria and tougher security policies, while the leadership simultaneously tries to maintain favor in Washington and advance diplomatic tracks with Arab states.
This creates a structural trap. Yielding too far to domestic pressure risks alienating Washington and collapsing critical diplomatic processes. Yielding too far to external demands risks the immediate collapse of the coalition. In this environment, an external framework like an SDGT designation does not arrive as a threat. It arrives as a political lifeline.
The prime minister can turn to restive coalition partners and present the designation not as a choice, but as an unavoidable external constraint. The very existence of fierce internal resistance is what makes the Washington-engineered tool so effective. Without that domestic friction, the prime minister would not require such elaborate political cover to shift policy. The resistance is not an obstacle to the mechanism — it is the condition that makes the mechanism necessary and powerful.
How the SDGT Label Is Inverted
A telling aspect of how these external frameworks operate is the way the proposed designation itself is reframed for domestic consumption. Rather than being presented as a tool of American leverage designed to constrain Israeli freedom of action in Judea and Samaria, the SDGT label is quickly recast in Israeli media and political discourse as a regrettable but necessary security measure.
The narrative shifts from “Washington is imposing a designation to limit settlement activity” to “Israel must act against dangerous elements to prevent international isolation.” This inversion transforms an instrument of external pressure into an apparent Israeli security imperative. It allows the leadership to implement the policy while maintaining the appearance that it is responding to internal threats rather than external dictates. The label, originally conceived as leverage, becomes politically useful precisely because it can be sold as something else entirely.
The Real Sovereignty Crisis
The core issue is not whether radical elements exist in Judea and Samaria. The deeper problem is that major Washington institutions are permitted to set the terms of Israel’s internal security debate — and that Israeli leadership consistently accepts their framing.
Rejecting this patron-client dynamic would carry immediate and severe costs. It would mean operating without the political cover these frameworks provide, forcing Israeli leaders to confront domestic coalitions without external lifelines. It would likely trigger sharp diplomatic friction with Washington, including the possibility of targeted sanctions, financial restrictions, and the freezing of security cooperation channels that have become deeply embedded in Israel’s strategic posture. So-called normalization processes with Arab states, which have been structured around alignment with American preferences, would face significant setbacks. In the short term, Israel would lose significant maneuvering room in both its regional diplomacy and its domestic political management.
These costs are real. But they are also the price of moving from managed policy execution to genuine strategic independence.
Until Israelis are willing to absorb those costs, its leadership’s policies in Judea and Samaria — like its policy toward Iran — will continue to be shaped by frameworks engineered in Washington rather than by independent, sovereign judgment.
Valeria Rinski contributed to this report
