“It fits in with what people like Haley have been saying,” Lara Friedman, the president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace, a nonprofit opposed to Israeli settlements in the West Bank, told Al-Monitor. “This doesn’t come out of nowhere. People who see this as a positive thing will see this as one more tool in the president’s arsenal to use.”

“The only concrete thing ‘softened’ by the new text is the removal of jail time for violations,” said Lara Friedman, the president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace, a nonprofit opposed to Israel’s West Bank settlements. The bill, she said, was also tweaked “so that the law does not necessarily apply to individuals if they are acting in an exclusively personal, private capacity.”