President Joe Biden on Friday sought to appease the Palestinians by reversing a Donald Trump-era policy that declared the presence of Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria (West Bank) legal under international law.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken has taken an increasingly hostile stance toward Israel. declared It said the settlement “violates international law” and reverted to policies adopted in 2016 during the lame-duck weeks of President Barack Obama’s administration.
playing cards reversed Obama policy in 2019.
The decision was likely made to appease domestic voters, including Muslim and Arab-American voters in battleground states like Michigan, who are dissatisfied with the Biden administration’s support for Israel and Hamas. It will be done.
But it also serves as a reward for Hamas terrorists, who launched a terrorist attack on October 7 that killed 1,200 people and took nearly 250 hostages in Israel. , can now claim to have reversed U.S. support for Israel in Judea and Samaria.
President Reagan said Israeli settlements were legal. This position has never been reversed. In order to prevent Jews from living between the river and the sea, Hamas murdered, tortured, and raped Jews, and the United States created a law prohibiting Jews from living between the river and the sea. It was necessary to make them claim that they were. https://t.co/Gl1RfPW0qe
— Eugene Kontorovich (@EVKontorovich) February 23, 2024
Critics slammed both the content of the decision and its timing. Matt Brooks, CEO of the Republican Jewish Federation, said:
Today, the Biden administration weakened Israel by overturning the Trump-Pompeo Doctrine, which recognized that according to international law, Israelis have the right to live in Judea and Samaria, which is legitimately part of the Jewish homeland. He has added yet another stain to his campaign to transform the country. .Labeling these communities as illegal is affirming BDS [boycott, divestment, and sanctions] The anti-Israel premise of the movement. The communities in question west of the West Bank security barrier are not preventing peace; it is Palestinian terrorism that is preventing peace.
In the aftermath of the horrific October 7 massacre, American leaders should follow their proud history of standing with Israel against their deadly enemies, but the Biden administration did the following: Shamefully, his first executive order sanctioned Israelis. Pressure Israel to recognize a Palestinian state, which would reward Hamas’ barbarism. And although the Jewish state has done more to prevent civilian casualties than any military in the Gaza Strip, according to John Spencer, West Point’s director of urban warfare research, Hamas terrorists in the Gaza Strip He called Israel’s response “excessive.” history.
The principles of Joe Biden’s Middle East policy have been exposed. It sends a signal that weakens the warring Jewish state and emboldens a common enemy.
The Biden administration has also launched sanctions against Israelis it says are involved in “settler violence.” This phenomenon is largely man-made and is trivialized by Palestinian violence against Israelis. The sanctions are a gift to anti-Israel extremists in that they are broad enough to allow the regime to apply sanctions to a wide swath of Israeli society.
One of the big problems with Biden’s policy is that Palestinians consider East Jerusalem (including the Jewish quarter of the Old City, where Jews have lived for thousands of years) to be an Israeli “settlement” and illegal under international law. That’s what I’m thinking. Israel captured the area from Jordan in 1967 after Jordan attacked Israel despite pleas for peace. Jordan occupied the area from 1948 to 1967, after expelling the Jewish residents and destroying the Jewish quarter.
Joel B. Pollack is a senior editor at Breitbart News. Breitbart News Sunday Sunday nights from 7:00 PM to 10:00 PM ET (4:00 PM to 7:00 PM PT) on Sirius XM Patriot. He is the author of the recent book, The Zionist Conspiracy (And How to Participate in It), now available on Audible. He is also the author of an e-book. Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 US Presidential Election. He is the recipient of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter @joelpolak.
