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I’m writing to share J Street’s statements and news updates.
It has been a particularly deadly week in the West Bank, with at least 10 Palestinians (including militants) and four Israelis killed – bringing the total number of people killed in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory this year to at least 155 Palestinians and 23 Israelis. This week began with an Israeli raid on the West Bank city of Jenin on Monday featuring intense fighting. Israel deployed Apache combat helicopters, which opened fire and rescued Israeli troops. Six Palestinians were killed, including both militants and a 15-year-old boy. The next day, Hamas militants mounted a terror attack that killed four Israelis in the West Bank settlement of Eli. Seeking revenge, roughly 400 Israeli settlers rampaged through the West Bank, including in the village of Turmus Ayya, where a majority of residents are Palestinian Americans. A US permanent resident married to a US citizen was killed and an Illinois state representative visiting his family was forced to shelter in place.
Meanwhile, the Netanyahu government continued its push toward massive settlement growth in the West Bank. It announced that over 4,500 new settlement units will soon be advanced and approved a resolution to expedite the process for approving new settlement construction (placing more power in the hands of powerful far-right Minister Bezalel Smotrich). Following the terror attack in Eli, Prime Minister Netanyahu, Defense Minister Gallant, and Smotrich announced 1,000 new housing units in Eli – which will roughly double its size. They said in a statement, “Our answer to terrorism is to strike at it forcefully and build up our country.”
I hope you’ll check out, or continue making use of, our regularly updated dossier on the Netanyahu government. As always, you can find our Congressional briefing book, background information on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, recordings of previous briefings and more at J Street’s Congressional Resource Page.
Feel free to reach out with any questions.
All the best,
Debra
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Debra Shushan, PhD
Director of Policy, J Street
mobile: (757) 746-0366 | [email protected] | @DrShushan
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This week on j street
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J STREET CONDEMNS TERROR ATTACK IN ELI; DEEPLY WORRIED BY NEW VIOLENT ESCALATION
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US MUST ACT TO COUNTER DESTRUCTIVE NEW MOVES BY NETANYAHU GOVERNMENT
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| ISSUE BRIEF |
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ISRAEL-SAUDI ARABIA NORMALIZATION MUST ADVANCE US INTERESTS
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What we’re reading
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Israeli Settlers Attack Palestinian Towns After Shooting
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| Israeli extremists caused widespread damage in a wave of attacks on Palestinian towns that lasted from Tuesday night until Wednesday night in revenge for the killing of four Israelis by Palestinian gunmen outside a nearby settlement in the territory… At least one Palestinian was shot and killed, and 12 others were injured, some of them in clashes with the Israeli security forces, according to the Palestinian health ministry. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the settler attacks unacceptable, saying: “The State of Israel is a state of law. The citizens of Israel are all obligated to respect the law.” But Mr. Netanyahu also attempted to assuage hard-line allies in his far-right government by announcing that he would immediately advance plans to build 1,000 new homes in Eli, the settlement in the West Bank close to the attack on Tuesday by Palestinian gunmen… The arson on Wednesday was centered in the village of Turmusayya, a frequent target of settler reprisals where many Palestinian residents also hold U.S. citizenship… Residents called on the U.S. ambassador in Jerusalem, Thomas R. Nides, to inspect the damage in person… Palestinian outlets reported that at least nine other Palestinian villages were attacked by settlers who smashed shop windows, threw stones and sometimes set up roadblocks, assaulted Palestinians and fired bullets at them. Palestinians accused the Israeli security forces of standing by as the settlers attacked, and even engaging in some of the violence itself. In a statement, the Israeli police acknowledged shooting one Palestinian, but said that its officers had opened fire only after Palestinian rioters disrupted efforts to put out fires. The Israeli military said it had acted to prevent clashes between Israelis and Palestinians, and condemned the violence by settlers. |
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Israel Eases West Bank Settlement Rules, Clearing Way for New Homes
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| The Israeli government on Sunday decided to ease and expedite the process for approving new Jewish settlement construction in the occupied West Bank amid plans to advance thousands of new housing units there. The policy change also transfers the main responsibility for housing approval from the defense minister, currently Yoav Gallant, to the finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, a far-right former settlement activist who is also serving as a secondary defense minister and who advocates Israeli annexation of the West Bank. The decision came as a senior American official, Barbara Leaf, the assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, was to arrive in the region. Her trip is aimed at, among other things, trying to expand Israel’s relations with Arab states — a mission that would appear to be complicated by the prospect of more settlement activity in the West Bank… Later Sunday, the United States State Department sharply criticized the Israeli government’s decision to accelerate the authorization process for settlement construction and its plans for thousands of additional housing units, saying it was “deeply troubled” by the actions… The amendment removes the need for high-level political approval at various interim stages of the planning process, making it harder for the prime minister and defense minister to slow or pause new settlement construction for diplomatic or security reasons and generally allowing for accelerated expansion… Mr. Smotrich commented on the changes to the planning process in a post on Twitter… “With God’s help, we will continue to expand settlement and strengthen Israel’s hold on the territory,” he added. |
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Coalition moves to restart overhaul, sets plan to limit High Court’s judicial review
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| Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s hardline coalition decided on Monday to reignite its controversial plan to shake up Israel’s judiciary, setting a goal to curtail judicial review of the “reasonableness” of government decisions before the Knesset recess next month. Legislation to take political control of judicial appointments — the core and most controversial element of the overhaul — will be scheduled for the winter session, which opens in October, according to several coalition sources… Announcing that coalition heads “reached a decision to continue the reform,” Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said that he “instructed” Constitution Law and Justice Committee head Simcha Rothman to begin advancing a bill as early as Wednesday to end the High Court of Justice’s ability to review government decisions for their reasonableness. Coalition sources confirmed that the political alliance plans to finalize this piece into law within the next six weeks, before the Knesset breaks for summer recess at the end of July… Shortly before the coalition finalized its plans, opposition party heads stressed that unilateral legislation would be the end of negotiations, which have been frozen since last week. “They have to convene the Judicial Selection Committee. That’s what was agreed upon with the president, and once they convene the committee, we can talk. As long as they don’t legislate [beforehand],” opposition leader Yair Lapid said… [President] Herzog released a statement on Monday to “emphasize” that “no binding drafts were sent by the President’s Residence to either side, and of course no full agreement was reached on any issue,” echoing opposition leaders skirting the issue of whether or not they expressed they would be comfortable with limiting the reasonableness test… Herzog also called on parties to return to the negotiating table, despite the red lines set and crossed among them. |
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Morocco cancels next month’s Negev Forum over Israeli settlement announcements
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| Morocco has decided to cancel plans to host the second ministerial gathering of the Negev Forum next month in response to a pair of Israeli moves to significantly expand its settlements in the West Bank, a US and an Israeli official told The Times of Israel on Tuesday. The gathering of foreign ministers from Israel, the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco, Egypt and the US was originally slated to take place in March but has been delayed several times amid escalating tensions between Israelis and Palestinians as well as discomfort among Arab participants over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s new hardline government. Over the past week, Rabat had agreed to finally hold the meeting next month. A date had not been finalized but it was “pretty locked up” for taking place in mid-July, the US official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. But then came a pair of Israeli settlement moves on Sunday that derailed the process once again, the US official said…Israeli efforts to further entrench its presence in the West Bank are also considered an obstacle to further normalization deals in the Middle East, including with Saudi Arabia. The US official said that the settlement moves might not directly impact the Biden administration’s efforts to broker a normalization agreement between Israel and the Saudis, “but does the whole atmosphere get tainted by all the stuff? Absolutely.”“I would be singularly focused on doing absolutely nothing that would prevent the Saudi deal from getting done, but they haven’t been able to do that,” the US official lamented. |
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New weapons, tactics further entangle U.S. in Israeli-Palestinian conflict
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| In a week that saw U.S.-made attack helicopters strafing a Palestinian city and Israeli settlers rampaging through a village filled with American citizens, the Biden administration finds itself caught up in a rapidly escalating conflict. Both sides are also introducing new and more powerful weapons and tactics that hark back to the all-out war of the second intifada more than 20 years ago, when Israel reoccupied much of the West Bank. For months the White House, which is mired in a prolonged diplomatic chill with Israel’s far-right government, has expressed concern over the spiraling violence in the West Bank, where Israel is being confronted by increasingly effective Palestinian militants, with whom its forces fought in lengthy street battles this week… The last time that the United States meaningfully engaged with the region was in 2014, when then-Secretary of State John F. Kerry oversaw the collapse of negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority… But with the violence across the West Bank escalating in both ferocity and sophistication — and increasing numbers of U.S. citizens on both sides of the divide — the United States may be forced to assume some measure of involvement once more… Hundreds of Palestinian Americans living in the West Bank, many in clusters near the city of Ramallah, say that the United States is obligated to do more to protect its people as they face off against both the Israeli army and growing numbers of armed Israeli settlers aiming to intimidate them from their land. “Why should my tax money fund the Israeli government that kills American citizens?” said Tamer Naser Jbaraha, a resident of Dallas whose cousin, Omar Ketin, a U.S. green-card holder, was killed by Israeli forces Wednesday in Turmus Ayya. |
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