I hope you are doing well.

I’m writing as a J Street advocacy leader to share important updates from the region as well as J Street’s statements and resources from the past week. This week, families of hostages in Gaza voiced fears they may never return as Israel resumed fighting; Israelis took to the streets to protest the ongoing strikes in Gaza and Netanyahu’s attack on the Israeli judiciary; and settler outposts in the West Bank continued to proliferate, fueling concerns over potential annexation.

You can find more on each of these developments and others below, along with our most recent statements here.

Please feel free to reach out to your J Street Public Affairs staff if you have any questions.

All the best,
Lily

—
Lily Adelstein
She/Her
Deputy Director of Government Affairs, J Street
Cell: 202-699-2701
J Street’s Congressional Resource Page

This week on j street

WEBINAR

Briefing: The Cost of Reigniting the Gaza War

Watch →

STATEMENT

J Street Responds to Netanyahu’s Decision to Resume Extensive Airstrikes in Gaza

STATEMENT

J Street Mourns the Loss of Congresswoman Nita Lowey

Families of hostages in Gaza are terrified they won’t return after Israel resumes fighting

Nearly 60 families have relatives still held in Gaza. About two dozen hostages are believed to be alive. During the ceasefire’s first phase, which began in January, Hamas released 25 Israeli hostages and the bodies of eight others in exchange for nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners. But since that phase ended early this month, the sides have not been able to agree on a way forward. Israel’s renewed airstrikes threaten to end the fragile deal. Nimrodi’s son, Tamir, was abducted from his army base when Hamas stormed into Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostage. She’s had no sign of life. He hasn’t been declared dead by Israel. “It’s so sad that this is the only solution that they could find,” she said, lamenting the government’s decision.

Hamas fires first rockets since Israel broke recent ceasefire

Scenes that were familiar from earlier in the war once again returned in Gaza: Israeli evacuation orders, partial prohibitions on movement between north and south Gaza, and airstrikes that have killed a total of more than 500 people — including more than 200 children — over the last several days, according to Gaza health officials. Israel said the return to war is in order to pressure Hamas to release more Israeli hostages. Hamas wants the original agreement to proceed, whereby it releases all living hostages and Israel agrees to permanently end the war, which Israel’s far-right government refuses to do.

Israelis Take to Streets a Day After Gaza Strikes

Thousands of Israelis gathered on Wednesday outside the Parliament building in Jerusalem to call for a renewed cease-fire deal in Gaza and to protest political moves by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, including firing the head of the Shin Bet intelligence agency. The convergence of popular anger over both domestic and national security issues came a day after Israel carried out deadly aerial attacks across the Gaza Strip in what Mr. Netanyahu said was “only the beginning.” …Opinion polls indicate that a majority of Israelis favor a complete cessation of hostilities in Gaza to secure the release of up to 24 living hostages and the bodies of more than 30 others still in Gaza. But politically, Mr. Netanyahu depends on far-right members of his governing coalition who have been pressing for a resumption of fighting, with the goal of fully defeating Hamas.

U.S. and Israel to hold high-level Iran consultations next week

President Trump has given Tehran a two-month window to negotiate a new nuclear deal, as Axios reported, and has raised the threat of military strikes on Iran’s nuclear program if no deal is reached. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his team think the odds of a deal are low and want to align on a joint course of action should things escalate to military force, one of the Israeli officials said.

Before Nita Lowey died, Trump’s DOGE eviscerated the $250M Middle East peace fund named for her

Just over four years ago, Congress achieved a major breakthrough when it came to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: It allocated up to $250 million for people-to-people peace-building efforts. Named after a longtime Jewish lawmaker who championed peace, the Nita M. Lowey Middle East Partnership for Peace Act had bipartisan support. It immediately became the largest investment of any single country in Israeli-Palestinian civil society initiatives, by a wide margin. Since then, the MEPPA fund, as it is known, has engaged more than 10,000 people, sustaining its work even as the Israel-Hamas war has undone or strained other peace efforts. And when Lowey died on Sunday at 87, U.S. Jewish groups praised the act as her lasting legacy. But that legacy is in jeopardy. All of the peace-building groups supported through the MEPPA fund have had their grants canceled amid the Trump administration’s slashing of USAID, the United States’ civilian foreign aid agency, and it’s unclear whether restoring them is possible.

U.S. Jewish Groups Warn Trump’s Education Cuts Threaten Fight Against Antisemitism

“The Trump Administration’s persistent attacks on American public education are going to strip support for disadvantaged schools, students with disabilities, and students facing discrimination and unequal treatment – including Jewish students facing antisemitism,” said J Street President Jeremy Ben-Ami. “Now is not the time to be abandoning federal protections for students on campus. It’s a core Jewish and American value that every child should have the freedom to access education and build a life better than that they were born into, no matter who they are or where they’re from,” he added.

Analysis | Israeli outposts have proliferated in the West Bank since Oct. 7… Palestinians fear annexation could be next.

The number of Israeli herding outposts has dramatically increased since Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right coalition took power in 2022 on a platform of settlement expansion. The government includes ministers who are themselves settlers and want to annex the occupied territory to Israel. In the wake of the Hamas-led attacks on October 7, 2023, which triggered Israel’s invasion of Gaza, settlers have accelerated land grabs with support from the state. Israeli herding outposts have ballooned by nearly 50% since the war broke out, according to a joint report shared exclusively with CNN by Peace Now and Kerem Navot, two Israeli advocacy groups that oppose settlements and track their development, covering data up to the end of December 2024.

Opinion | The Gaza ceasefire is over. What’s next?

“The ceasefire largely held in the first 42 days. There were violations on the edges and grotesque public displays by Hamas as it released Israeli prisoners—an effort to signal that it was still in full control of Gaza. However, the biggest challenge was that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had refused to engage seriously on Phase II. Why? Because any realistic talk about “the day after” in Gaza, must involve some element of Palestinian self-rule—a concept that is anathema to Netanyahu’s far right-wing allies, Itamar Ben Gvir and Belazal Smotrich. Ben Gvir had already left the governing coalition over the first ceasefire, and Smotrich said he would leave over any Phase II agreement—leading to a collapse of Netanyahu’s government. Netanyahu’s focus on staying in power instead of ending the conflict has been a problem since the start of the war and prevented him from engaging seriously on post-conflict planning—ultimately ensuring Israel’s failure to displace Hamas from Gaza. Now it has become a key reason for the restart of fighting.”

J STREET GOVERNMENT AFFAIRS NEWS DIGEST | March 21, 2025