Well, it sounded good, anyway

From the BBC:

The United States is cutting nearly $290m from a loan guarantee package to Israel in response to its settlement activity in the West Bank and Gaza.

Israel is also being penalised for the building of a barrier in the West Bank to separate Israelis and Palestinians.

So is the US actually getting serious about pressing Israel to dismantle its illegal settlements in the West Bank? Well, no, not really.

For one thing, the amount is about 3% of the $9 billion in loan guarantees being provided to Israel. For another, there is still the roughly $3 billion a year in direct (mostly military) aid Israel gets from the US yearly.

Then there's the fact that

The amount to be deducted was agreed by the two sides at a meeting in Washington on Tuesday between top officials from the White House and the office of the Israeli Prime Minister.

Broadly speaking, the US guideline is to reduce its loan guarantee by an amount equivalent to what the Israelis spend on Jewish settlement expansion in the Palestinian territories.

However, as the Beeb notes, the figure is a little more than half of what Israel spends on support of the settlers in those territories, pointing to a study by the Israeli daily Haaretz which concluded that total is something like $500 million - not including the costs of military protection.

To make things even less impressive, "The Israeli embassy even said in a statement that the amount cut had been 'suggested' by Israel."

So the $290 million reduction in loan guarantees, which is separate from aid, was the result of an agreement based on a figure suggested by Israel that actually is less than half of what it spends annually to support and defend its existing illegal settlements. Bold leadership, George, bold.

Bottom line: How much will this actually cost Israel? About $4 million in higher interest costs - while it continues to receive 750 times that in direct US aid. Somehow, I think they can scrape it up.

Footnote: When Israel makes reference, as it does occasionally, to "illegal" Jewish settlements in the West Bank, be aware that the reference is not to all the settlements, but only to those ones not approved by the Israeli government, as noted by the Israeli peace group Peace Now in recent testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.