Peloni: This is an important article, arguing for the positions being adopted in Judea & Samaria by the US Republicans to be promoted by Israel among their Democratic counterparts, thus restoring the bipartisan nature of support for Israel while maintaining the gains currently being supported by the Republicans. Israel’s long term future alliance with America requires a bipartisan base, and as the Democrats have taken to largely repositioning themselves towards anti-American, and thereby anti-Israel, policies, it will be important for Israeli activists to try to revive the bipartisan nature of the relationship between Israel and the US as much as possible, by interacting with candidates who have not entirely moved towards the Islamist wing of the party.
Today, America’s conservatives stand beside us, urging the same resolve. It is an invitation Israel should embrace with confidence.
By JPOST EDITORIAL |
Photo by Office of Speaker Mike Johnson – X.com, Public Domain, Wikipedia
US Speaker of the House Mike Johnson’s decision to stand in the Samaria city of Ariel on Monday and declare that “Judea and Samaria… must remain an integral part” of Israel was far more than a private photo op. It marked the clearest sign yet that today’s Republican leadership is steadily erasing the Green Line from United States policy toward the Jewish state.
Johnson’s visit capped a string of high-level steps taken since President Donald Trump returned to the White House in January. On his first afternoon back in the Oval Office, Trump revoked Executive Order 14115 and lifted financial sanctions that the previous administration had imposed on a handful of what they called “extremist settlers” accused of West Bank violence.
Less than two weeks later, Sen. Tom Cotton introduced the RECOGNIZING Judea and Samaria Act, a bill that would bar federal agencies from using the term “West Bank” in official documents, replacing it with the biblical term favored by Israel’s settler movement.
In February, the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) adopted a resolution urging Washington to “recognize Israel’s sovereignty over Judea and Samaria.”
On the same day, House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Brian Mast circulated an internal memo instructing Republican staffers to follow suit in all committee correspondence.
Diplomats followed politicians. In a June interview with Bloomberg, US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee abandoned the long-standing American goal of an independent Palestinian state, suggesting instead that any eventual Palestinian entity be established “elsewhere in the Arab world.”
The State Department then pivoted its pressure campaign away from settlement violence and toward Ramallah, imposing visa bans on senior Palestinian Authority officials it accused of “internationalizing” the conflict at the International Criminal Court.
Three forces underpin this conservative cartography:
Beware of what you pray for and Festine Lente – make haste slowly. Israel is still a relatively small fly inthe international oint,ment and needs to tip toe between tulips of apartheid accusations and the legalities of keeping “foreign Arabs ” off its electoral rolls.
While Judea and Samaria are NOT Israel and only OETA – Occupied Enemy Territory Administration; it is possible regardless of Arab and others’ PR, to refute apartheid accusations and disenfranchise the ex- Jordanian Arabs in Judea and Samaria as ‘aliens’ or ‘foreign nationals’.
If some hasty ultra nationalist declares Judea and Samaria – the ex-“West Bank” of Jordan – to be Israel as successor to the Mandate which gave the Arabs all citizen rights as subjects – then these Arabs are no longer legal foreigners and have to be treated like Israeli citizens – votes and all welfare.
The ways out are validly susceptible to accusations of Jim Crow discrimination. 1) That as in Jerusalem the Arabs cut their noses to spite their faces by refusing to vote.
2) That Israel stops all State welfare as did Boer South Africa even if it allows professional associations and employers to issue welfare (through charity and insurance devices) and provides a central bank guarantee and inspection of these welfare funds – an extended charity supervising commission.
3) That Israel enacts a citizenship law which disqualifies the Arabs of Gaza, Judea and Samaria from ISraaeli benefits and votes by some failure to naturalise or take an oath of allegiaance or other formality skimpy on Enlightenment principles of: Liberty Equality and Fraterrnity; and no test of religiion….
Israeli government needs to take concrete actions to take full advantage of the GOP and Trump in power and on the side of Israel.
Apply Israeli civil law now to Jordan Valley and all of Area C, all military bases and nature reserves. Build E1 now and kick any Arab squatters to make Jerusaleum to Maalah Adumumin contiguous.
What happens to Israel’s economy when EU (27 relatively rich countries and Israel’s biggest trading partner) and IOC (56 countries Islamic Organisation Conference) and many others such as BRICS and clients, then make visa problems and tariff problems and vote against Israel in every international forum?
Israel was in a more difficult situation in the 49 – 56 years if not the 49 – 67 years BUT there is no need to invite more trouble than necessary.