A letter from 73 Congress democrats in the US House of Representatives including a number in leadership positions has urged president Joe Biden to make a number of moves to reverse what they call the Trump administration’s departure from “a longstanding bipartisan US policy” on Palestinian-Israeli issues.
Among other things the letter sent Wednesday to Biden called on Biden to firmly consider Israeli settlements “illegal” and the West Bank “occupied” two things the Trump administration stated that it would no longer do according to US news reports.
“Make clear that the United States considers settlements to be inconsistent with international law by reissuing relevant State Department and US customs guidance to that effect” their letter was quoted as saying by US media.
It also pushes for all “relevant official US documents and communications” to “once again consistently refer to the status of the West Bank and Gaza Strip as occupied.”
The letter’s signatories include seven committee chairs among them Rosa DeLauro who leads the powerful Appropriations Committee and John Yarmuth who heads the Budget Committee as well as the assistant Speaker of the House Katherine Clark.
Donald Trump upended decades of US policy in the region by giving Israel the right to annex parts of the West Bank in addition to agreeing to Israel’s claim to the Golan Heights and moving the US embassy to Jerusalem.
Unlike Trump Biden obviously has differences with Israel but he prefers to keep them behind closed doors. During last month’s conflict he ignored calls from the party’s left to leverage assistance to Israel to pressure it to end the conflict and worked in camera on defusing the tension.
The letter asked Biden to “consistently” condemn in public statements any “specific actions that violate the rights of either party or undermine the prospects for peace.”
Biden however already favors some of the eight specific recommendations in the letter including the resumption of sending aid to the Palestinians and reopening a separate consulate in Jerusalem for Palestinian relations.
The letter also highlighted the need for Biden to abandon Trump’s peace plan which supported Israeli plots to annex portions of the occupied West Bank and to pressure Israel to stop the intended mass eviction of Palestinian families from eastern Jerusalem which contributed to the volatile environment that triggered last month’s violent conflict between Gaza and Israel.
