By Jonathan Saul and Simon Lewis
ALON SHVUT, West Bank (Reuters) – Ruth Lieberman, a Jewish settler in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, is determined to fend off international pressure for a sovereign Palestinian state. And his friends with prominent U.S. Republicans from the party’s religious right helped, he said.
The week after the Oct. 7 attack by the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, Lieberman hosted pro-Israel conservative Senator Mike Lee, a Mormon, for a Shabbat meal at his family’s home, Senate records show.
The conversation turned to a Palestinian state, and Lieberman told Lee that the attack had shaken Israel’s opposition to the idea, he said in an interview from his home near Bethlehem, in Alon Shvut, in one of the West Bank’s largest settlement groups, known as Gush Etzion . Lee did not respond to a request for comment.
The visit helped align senior Republican Party officials’ views with the settlers and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government on Oct. 7, said Lieberman, a political consultant who often hosts US delegations visiting the settlements.
“Having friends and voices like that in very high places in the U.S. helps us,” said Lee and U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson, an evangelical Christian who visited his family in February 2020 during Donald Trump’s presidency, long before he became speaker. . Johnson did not respond to a request for comment.
Since October 7, Lieberman and others have stepped up their efforts, hoping to influence the Republican Party’s position ahead of the November US election that could return Trump to office.
Lieberman and a delegation of settlement officials pressed the case in a meeting with Johnson and Lee, among others, in Washington last month, according to a statement from the delegation.
Reuters visited two Gush Etzion settlements and spoke to two dozen Israelis and Palestinians in the West Bank and Israel, three current and former Trump aides and three evangelical leaders between March and July. The Reuters people said to be explained to the grassroots groups of settlers, members of the Israeli religious right and conservative Christians used to convince Trump and the Republican Party to drop the longstanding support of the US for the Palestinian state, arguing that the violence was rewarded on October 7.
While Trump has suggested U.S. policy could change, neither he nor his party has been clear about its position toward a Palestinian state if he wins the election.
Campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt did not respond to questions about Trump’s views on settlements and the future for the Palestinians. He said Israel has never had a better friend in the White House than Trump.
The United States supported the Oslo Accords that outlined the path to a Palestinian state 30 years ago and supports what is known as the two-state solution. The Palestinians and most countries, including the United States, say that Israel’s West Bank settlements violate international law on the occupied territories and mark an ongoing violation that hinders the country’s aspirations. On Friday, the highest UN court ruled the settlement illegal. Israel calls the verdict “fundamentally wrong”
The war in Gaza has revived pressure, including the public of US President Joe Biden, to negotiate a Palestinian state neighboring Israel, which Palestinians foresees including the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem.
In Israel itself, two states remain the most popular way to peace, a May poll by Tel Aviv University showed, although support was only 33% of respondents, up from 43% before October 7.
However, the annexation of the West Bank by Israel and limiting the rights of Palestinians living there, an option favored by some settlers, has the support of 32% of Israelis, up from 27% before 7 October. This seems to be a growing result. polls show.
Ohad Tal, a lawmaker with the hardline Religious Zionist party who lives in Gush Etzion, said settler leaders seeking to annex West Bank land permanently are increasingly finding support for Trump and his evangelical allies.
“It’s one of our main goals now to strengthen our relationship with these groups,” Tal said of evangelical Christians. “We are fighting the same battle.”
‘KEEP GOD’S LAND’
Rabbi Israel Pesach Wolicki has long advocated cooperation between the Israeli religious right and what he calls American Christian Zionists, evangelicals who saw the prophecy fulfilled when the Jews returned to Judea and Samaria in the Bible, many of which were located in the West Bank and were captured. and occupied by Israel during the 1967 Middle East war.
Starting on the night of October 7, Wolicki said, he began to gather like-minded leaders together in a campaign called “Keep God’s Land” which aims to influence Trump and the Republican Party to reject the two-state solution, using US religion. media outlets and conferences to lobby against Biden’s arguments for a Palestinian state.
Keep God’s Land says it has formed a coalition of more than 1,000 Jewish and Christian faith leaders.
The conservatism and size of the US evangelical community, numbering in the tens of millions, make it a comfortable ally for the Israeli right, said Rachel Moore, who has also received delegations from members of the US Congress and lives in the Neve Gush Etzion settlement. Daniel.
“There’s a perception that only the Christian community gets it,” Moore said, referring to the political distance that right-wing Israelis feel from the liberal attitudes of many US Jews, particularly regarding settlements in the West Bank.
Fear of Christians trying to convert Jews made the engagement controversial in Israel.
Southern Baptist pastor Tony Perkins, president of the evangelical advocacy group the Family Research Council, has become another key figure in aligning Christian conservatives and Israel and has appeared at the Keep God’s Land event. As a Republican National Committee delegate, Perkins pushed to make Israel a priority in the campaign.
He said support for settlers among evangelicals had surged after the Hamas attack, which killed about 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and took about 150 hostages, according to Israeli counts. Israel’s subsequent war in Gaza has killed more than 38,000 Palestinians, according to figures from Gaza’s health ministry.
A Pew survey in February found 33% of white US evangelical Protestants support the idea of ​​a single state under Israeli control, up four percentage points from 2022 and twice as high as the average respondent.
Perkins, who visited Gush Etzion in March and also met with Netanyahu, was an early advocate for bringing members of the US Congress to West Bank settlements, said Heather Johnston, an Israel specialist on biblical prophecy and CEO of the US Israel Education Association.
In recent years, groups including Lieberman’s foundation and the USIEA have organized privately funded trips by dozens of mostly Republican members of Congress to the settlement, which had previously been rarely visited by US officials.
‘JUDEA AND SAMARIA’
Always God’s Land gathered on April 15 at the headquarters of the Heritage Foundation, a major conservative think tank on Washington’s Capitol Hill.
Speakers included senator and former Florida governor Rick Scott, lawmaker Israel Tal and Congresswoman Claudia Tenney, who in March introduced a bill to the House of Representatives to use the biblical name Judea and Samaria in official US documents instead of the West Bank.
The bill has been referred to the Foreign Affairs Committee. Judea and Samaria is a term favored by right-wing Israelis.
Scott’s office did not respond to a request for comment. A spokesman for Tenney declined to comment.
Since October 7, the Netanyahu government has accelerated its 30-year plan to build on West Bank land, including in Gush Etzion, according to the Israeli NGO Peace Now, an Israeli NGO that tracks and opposes West Bank settlements.
This expansion has “one purpose, to expel the Palestinians from their land,” said Juliette Banoura, a Bethlehem resident who investigates settlements.
The number of Israelis in the West Bank has increased by a third to 700,000 in the past decade, the UN said, about 10% of Israel’s Jewish population.
Settler violence has exploded over the past year, prompting US and EU sanctions against people and entities blamed for the escalation. Everyone Reuters spoke to condemned the violence.
David Friedman, who as ambassador to Israel in 2020 developed Trump’s plan for a limited Palestinian state, now supports one, developing Israel without full citizenship for the Palestinians, an arrangement he likened in an interview with Puerto Rico. He said he had not discussed the plan with Trump.
Residents of Puerto Rico, a poor US territory, are considered US citizens but cannot vote in presidential elections.
Rejecting Palestinian statehood leads to more conflict, said Nabil Abu Rudeineh, spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
“To live in peace in the region, they must reach an agreement with the Palestinians,” he said.
