Biden supports Israel and Gaza for a ceasefire in a call with Netanyahu

WASHINGTON – In a phone call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday, President Joe Biden expressed “his support for the ceasefire,” according to a White House reading of the conversation. The shift came after 29 Democratic and independent senators issued a joint statement on the issue earlier on Monday. “To prevent any further loss of civilian life and to prevent the further escalation of the conflict in Israel and the Palestinian territories, we urge an immediate ceasefire,” said the group led by Senator John Usov, de Ga. At least 200 Palestinians were killed in a week-long air strikes, including 59 children and 35 women, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health. Ten people in Israel, including a 5-year-old child and a soldier, were killed in rocket attacks launched from Gaza towards civilian areas in Israel. . It is also a fraught political debate in Washington, as Democrats are increasingly divided over the continued economic and military support the United States has provided Israel since its founding. Movement for a more balanced, pro-Israel, pro-peace, anti-peace US policy Logan Bayeroff, communications director at J Street, a left-wing Jewish group, said the occupation … has grown significantly over the past few years, and has become a major force in the Democratic Party. Stronger support for the Palestinians, who have been marginalized for most of the Trump administration, and tensions between Democrats escalated Monday after the Washington Post reported that the Biden administration approved $ 735 million in precision-targeted weapons for Israel.Members of Congress were notified of the sale nearly two weeks ago. It makes up only a fraction of the more than $ 3 billion in annual security assistance that the United States sends to Israel. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., And some Democrats have criticized the aid, saying it should come with associated conditions. Sanders wrote in his book, “Why?” We can longer be an advocate of the right-wing Netanyahu government and its racist and racist behavior. ”An opinion piece in The New York Times says it is illegal for US aid to support human rights violations.“ For years we have witnessed an Israeli occupation. Deep in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and an ongoing blockade of Gaza is making life increasingly unbearable for Palestinians, Sanders writes. Bayeroff said that J Street wants the White House to ensure that none of the US security assistance to Israel is used to fund equipment or other items that Israel deploys to expand settlements, demolish homes, or other activities “that entrench the occupation and make this conflict worse.” Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has repeatedly indicated that Hamas, which the United States considers a terrorist group, is firing rockets at Israeli civilians. Not much rhetorical attention was given to the spark that ignited the conflict: an attempt by Jewish settlers to evict Palestinian families from their homes in East Jerusalem, and Biden’s support for the ceasefire came Monday in a private call with Netanyahu, not the public. To demand an end to violence. In that conversation, the White House said Biden reiterated his “unwavering support for Israel’s right to defend itself against indiscriminate missile attacks.” Ilan Goldenberg, who worked on Israeli-Palestinian negotiations at the State Department during the Obama administration, said Israel has become a more partisan issue – in part because of Netanyahu’s full embrace of the Republican Party and his hostile relations with the White House during the Obama administration. There is also, he said, a growing and growing minority within the Democratic Party that wants the United States to play a different role in the conflict. “It becomes a very difficult kind of political balance for the administration to strike for the democratic administration to hit an increasingly divisive issue within the party itself.” He said that there is still a very strong pro-Israel team in the Democratic Party, but there is a feeling that lawmakers could be both pro-Israel and opposing Netanyahu’s aggressive settlement policies, which have pushed the Palestinians into ever-shrinking lands, and some Democrats say Biden’s handling of the conflict between Israel and Gaza undermines his pledge to put human rights at the center of US foreign policy. You don’t prioritize human rights. Representative Ilhan Omar, a Democrat, tweeted last week after the White House issued a reading of Biden’s call with Netanyahu, “You are standing with an oppressive occupation. A decision looms. On Friday, Senator Bob Menendez, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, issued a rare condemnation of the Israeli attacks on a building housing the Associated Press and Al. “I am deeply disturbed by reports of Israeli military operations that have resulted in the deaths of Innocent civilians in Gaza as well as the Israeli targeting of buildings housing international media. ”In recent years, newly elected progressives have been more willing to criticize basic US political positions on Israel and the Palestinian territories.“ The Palestinians are an occupied people. They are an oppressed people. Innocents and children suffer because America supports the occupation and denies the freedom of the Palestinians, “Rep. Jamal Bowman, DNY., Welcomed Corrie Bush, a Democrat, who explicitly linked the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians to issues of police brutality and racial justice in the United States.” Black lives and the struggle for Palestinian liberation are intertwined. “We oppose our money that goes to finance military police, occupation, oppressive regimes and violent traumas,” Bush wrote in a tweet on Twitter. In a speech before the House of Representatives, Representative Rashida Tlaib, a Palestinian-American, said that it was “a reminder to colleagues that the Palestinians do exist, and that we are human.” Taleb then condemned her colleagues for continuing “unconditional support” for Israel that “made possible the erasure of Palestinian life.” But many Democrats in Washington view the Israeli coalition as “firing rockets at civilians in Israel as a terrorist act, for a while. The latest missile launch underscores the need for missile defense programs, such as Iron Dome, which protect Israeli civilians – Arabs and Jews – from terror.” Hamas, “Rep. Ritchie Torres tweeted, DNY. Others have spoken, too. Against the terrorist group. “Please don’t be fooled by wrong choices. Israel and Hamas? If I am asked to (choose) between a terrorist organization and our democratic ally, I will stand by Israel every day of the week,” said Representative Ted Deutsch, a Florida Democrat, chair of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee On the Middle East, North Africa and the fight against global terrorism, in a speech on Thursday.