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I hope you are doing well.
I’m writing to share important updates from the region, as well as J Street’s statement from this past week. As a reminder, you can always find our most recent statements on J Street crisis response page.
I’m also happy to share that J Street is hiring for a Deputy Director of Government Affairs – please feel free to share with anyone who might be interested.
All the best,
Regev
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Regev (Rae) Ortal (she/her)
Senior Government Affairs Associate, J Street
mobile: (719) 301-8453 | [email protected]
Find J Street: Website | Facebook | Twitter
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This week on j street
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| STATEMENT |
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US SHOULD SEEK UNEQUIVOCAL ISRAELI COMMITMENT, IN WORD AND IN DEED, AGAINST MASS TRANSFER OF CIVILIANS FROM GAZA
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What we’re reading
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Democrats say Biden must notify Congress about Israel arms transfers
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| More than a dozen Senate Democrats said Tuesday that they will seek to block President Biden’s request to skirt congressional oversight of arms transfers to Israel, the latest signal of frustration among members of his own political party who have recoiled at the stunning civilian death toll resulting from Israel’s offensive in Gaza. The Biden administration, which rushed to back Israel after Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre, has been unusually secretive about its ongoing military support program, and is seeking to exempt its arms transfers from a mandatory congressional notification process that applies to all other foreign arms sales. At the moment, lawmakers are negotiating over Biden’s request for more than $10 billion in additional military assistance for Israel — already the largest recipient of U.S. security aid — as part of a $106 billion supplemental budget request that would pay for a host of national security initiatives… Biden’s request, according to bill text released by the Senate Appropriations Committee, included a provision saying “any congressional notification requirement applicable to funds made available … for Israel may be waived if the Secretary of State determines that to do so is in the national security interest of the United States.” |
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Hamas says hostages won’t go home alive as long as Israeli forces remain in Gaza.
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| Israeli hostages held in the Gaza Strip “will not be returned alive” unless Israeli forces leave, a Hamas spokesman said on Wednesday, highlighting the predicament facing the Israeli government: It has vowed to free the hostages, and to pursue the war and defeat Hamas. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is under significant pressure to do whatever is required to get the remaining hostages who are still alive — more than 100 of them, the government says — home safely. Yet public opinion surveys show that most Israelis also support his stated aim of eliminating Hamas, which led the deadly Oct. 7 assault on Israel, as a military force. Parsing the meaning of such statements is a challenge, in part because Hamas has not always followed through on previous threats… It was also unclear whether Mr. Hamdan was saying the hostages, who have been in captivity more than three months, would be killed, or that they would be held indefinitely. It has kept some of its kidnap victims for years. |
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Inspections, Bottlenecks and Safety Concerns Hinder Gaza Aid
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| The trucks carrying aid for Gaza stop for exhaustive inspections by Israeli authorities. They can pass through two border crossings only during limited hours. Inside the territory, vehicles travel over a landscape of rubble and ruined roads to distribute the aid to desperate, hungry crowds. These obstacles are contributing to a growing humanitarian crisis, according to aid officials and two U.S. senators who recently visited Rafah, one of the two crossings into Gaza that is open for aid trucks. Aid groups and the U.N. warn that the risk of famine is widening, that the territory’s health care system is collapsing and that contagious diseases are spreading rapidly. Fighting and Israeli airstrikes have killed about 23,000 people in Gaza, according to health officials in Gaza, including more than 150 aid workers, according to the U.N. and aid groups, who say the war prevents others from being able to report for duty. Aid groups say the trucks sometimes come under fire from Israeli forces, despite their efforts to coordinate the convoys with the Israeli military in advance. |
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Analysis | U.S. Wants a ‘New Palestinian Authority’ to Rule Gaza. In Exchange, Abbas Wants Statehood
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| Along with efforts to create tenable living conditions even in a situation in which most residents of the Gaza Strip have become homeless, the U.S. administration wishes to establish a framework of civil rule for the day after the war ends, transferring civil control to a Palestinian body. In this matter, the administration itself has not yet formulated parameters that will enable the transfer of control into Palestinian hands. Thus, for example, it’s unclear what a “renewal” plan for the Palestinian Authority includes, so that it can fulfill a role in Gaza and at least enjoy American backing… However, before talking about the nature and character of such a new PA, Abbas has two basic demands from the U.S. administration: a cease-fire and a launching of talks about the establishment of an independent Palestinian state. Regarding the second point, he actually received some American support when Blinken clarified that he supported taking concrete steps leading to a Palestinian state. However, there is no dictionary in place yet that will clarify what “concrete steps” means. |
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Analysis | The Israeli right undermines Biden’s Middle East agenda
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| The rhetoric coming from within Israel has made U.S. attempts to hatch a regional plan to calm the crisis more difficult… One strain of analysis suggests that Netanyahu is subject to the forces that will keep him in power — namely, far-right firebrands like national security minister Itamar Ben Gvir and finance minister Bezalel Smotrich. “These two far-right cabinet members are constantly fueling disputes between Israel and America and fanning the flames of polarization in Israel. … And Netanyahu appears to be their captive,” Amos Harel wrote in Israeli newspaper Haaretz. The Israeli right’s appetite for a maximalist victory and the broader domestic politics of the moment, Harel added, may mean Netanyahu “has a clear interest in making the war in Gaza drag on throughout the next year. And it’s hard to refute the American fear that this time, with his back to the wall, Netanyahu might also consider further escalation on the northern front…” But the provocations of the Israeli far right and the ruinous scale of the war in Gaza is forcing difficult conversations back on the table — including a recognition that the lack of political and civil rights for millions of Palestinians living under Israeli occupation can no longer be simply swept under the rug. |
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Analysis | Gaza Genocide Case Against Israel: The Key Legal Questions Facing the International Court of Justice
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| Under international law, in order to prove genocide is being committed, it is necessary to show both a physical and a mental element: one or more acts have to be done with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group. The acts that can fulfill the physical element include killing members of the group, causing serious bodily harm or mental harm to members of the group, and deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part. As there is no doubt that Israel has killed many Palestinians in Gaza, and caused bodily harm to many others, the issue on which South Africa’s claims before the International Court of Justice that Israel commits genocide against Palestinians in Gaza will rise or fall is the question of intent. |
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From Lebanon to the Red Sea, a Broader Conflict With Iran Looms
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| American intelligence officials say Iran did not instigate or approve the Hamas attack in Israel and probably was not even told about it. Hamas may have feared that word of the attack would leak from Iran, given how deeply Israeli and Western intelligence have penetrated the country. But as soon as the war against Hamas began, Iran’s proxy forces went on the attack. There were, however, significant indications that Iran, facing its own domestic problems, wanted to limit the conflict. Early on, Israel’s war cabinet discussed a pre-emptive strike on Hezbollah in Lebanon, telling the Americans that an attack on Israel was imminent and part of an Iranian plan to go after Israel from all sides. Mr. Biden’s aides pushed back, arguing that the Israeli assessment was wrong, and deterred the Israeli strike. They believe they prevented — or at least delayed — a broader war. Yet in recent days the threat of a war with Hezbollah has resurfaced… But in Washington, the concern now is less about a Hezbollah attack on Israel than an Israeli strike on Hezbollah. The United States has told Israel that if Hezbollah comes over the border, Washington will support Israel — but not the other way around. |
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