 |
|
I hope you’ve had a great week!
I’m writing to share important updates from the region, as well as J Street’s statements and resources from this past week. As a reminder, you can always find our most recent statements on J Street crisis response page.
All the best,
Hannah
—
Hannah Morris
She/Her
Director of Government Affairs, J Street
Cell: 832-606-1817
J Street’s Congressional Resource Page
|
This week on j street
|
|
|
| STATEMENT |
|
J STREET WELCOMES NEW OVERSIGHT AND TRANSPARENCY MEASURES FOR MILITARY AID
|
| Read more → |
|
|
|
|
|
| WEBINAR |
|
Tackling the Humanitarian Crisis in Gaza
|
| Watch → |
|
|
|
|
|
| STATEMENT |
|
J STREET SUPPORTS COMPREHENSIVE MILITARY AID PACKAGE TO ISRAEL, REJECTS REPUBLICAN PLOY
|
| Read more → |
|
|
|
|
|
What we’re reading
|
Biden says countries receiving U.S. weapons must adhere to international law
|
 |
| President Biden on Thursday issued a memorandum that lays out the standards countries that receive U.S. weapons must adhere to and, for the first time, requires the administration to submit an annual report to Congress about whether countries are meeting the requirements. The national security memorandum comes after prominent Democratic lawmakers have raised concerns about Israel’s military campaign in Gaza and whether the country, which has received hundreds of millions of dollars worth of U.S. weapons, has adhered to international law. Nearly half of Senate Democrats have supported a measure that would ensure Israel and other countries are held accountable for meeting those standards. The memorandum comes just as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that the Israeli military will continue its Gaza campaign in Rafah, where more than 1 million Palestinians have fled for safety under Israeli guidance. On Thursday, White House spokesman John Kirby said any Israeli operation in Rafah under the current circumstances “would be a disaster for those people, and we would not support it.” |
| read more |
Israeli Airstrikes Hit Gaza’s Rafah as U.S. Warns Against Ground Operation in City
|
 |
| Israel bombed targets in overcrowded Rafah city in the southern Gaza Strip early Friday, hours after Biden administration officials and aid agencies warned Israel against expanding its Gaza ground offensive to the southern city where more than half of the territory’s 2.3 million people have sought refuge… Twenty-two people were killed, according to AP journalists who saw the bodies arriving at hospitals. U.S. President Joe Biden said Thursday that Israel’s conduct in the war, ignited by a deadly October 7 Hamas attack, is “over the top,” the harshest U.S. criticism yet of its close ally and an expression of concern about a soaring civilian death toll in Gaza… Israel’s stated intentions to expand its ground offensive to Rafah also prompted an unusual public backlash in Washington… Aid agency officials also sounded warnings over the prospect of a Rafah offensive. |
| read more |
US intel says Israel degraded Hamas capabilities, but not close to eliminating group
|
 |
| Israel has degraded Hamas’s combat capabilities but is not yet close to achieving its war aim of eliminating the Palestinian terror organization, US intelligence officials told members of Congress this week, according to a New York Times report on Thursday. Citing American officials, the report noted that the Biden administration has raised doubts over how realistic is Israel’s stated war goal of destroying Hamas, following the terror group’s murderous rampage across southern Israel on October 7… Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has insisted throughout the war that destroying Hamas’s military and political capabilities, and bringing back all the hostages, are the primary aims of the ongoing war. At a press conference on Wednesday, after a day of talks with visiting US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Netanyahu said “absolute victory” over Hamas was within reach, and would be achieved “in months.” At his separate press conference a short while later, Blinken warned Israel that it does not have “a license to dehumanize others” and said the war’s toll on ordinary Gazans was too high. |
| read more |
Analysis | Hostages’ Families to Intensify Their Campaign as Netanyahu Rebuffs Mediation Efforts
|
 |
| Reports in The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal claiming that only 80 of the 136 hostages held by Hamas are still alive garnered a great deal of attention in Israel… In addition to the known dead, there are dozens of other hostages whose fate is uncertain, including some from whom there has been no sign of life since Hamas committed its massacre on October 7… Even before it was published, the hostages’ families and the Hostages and Missing Families Forum had been waging a fraught battle to demand that the government immediately sign a deal that would bring all the hostages home, at any price… While the families and the media are devoting most of their attention to the hostages, the government is trying to highlight the achievements of the military operation in Gaza. This is being done in part to gain time to continue the fighting, as long as there is no real progress in the negotiations on a hostage deal. |
| read more |
Analysis | What the U.S. recognizing a Palestinian state would mean
|
 |
| For decades the U.S. has pushed a two-state solution to the conflict in the Middle East but not formally recognized an independent Palestinian state. That may be about to change… Offering that recognition before any final comprehensive deal between the two parties would mark an apparent shift in Washington’s position, as it navigates an issue of extraordinary sensitivity at home and abroad… Recognition is a long-held goal for Palestinians and their supporters, bestowing political and international legitimacy as well as symbolic clout in this most intractable of conflicts… “We’ve been calling for recognition of a Palestinian state for a long time,” said Mustafa Barghouti, a member of the Palestinian parliament, where he leads the Palestinian National Initiative party. “But the American declaration does not mean anything unless it is associated with three things,” the veteran politician said in a telephone interview. He listed an end to Israel’s occupation, removal of its settlements in the occupied West Bank, and an agreement of what the Palestinian state’s borders would look like.” |
| read more |
|
