Israeli settlers bow to religious republic after attacks on Hamas by Reuters
Written 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 thwart international pressure on an independent Palestinian state. And his friendship with prominent American Republicans from the party's religious right helps, he says.
A few weeks after the Oct. 7 attack by the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, Lieberman hosted pro-Israel, conservative Senator Mike Lee, a Mormon, for a Shabbat dinner at his home, Senate records show.
The conversation turned to Palestinian nationalism, and Lieberman told Lee that the attack made the Israelis oppose the idea, he said in an interview at his home near Bethlehem, in Alon Shvut, in the middle of the West Bank's largest enclave, known as the Gush. Etzion. Lee did not respond to requests for comment.
Such visits help align the views of top Republican Party officials with settlers and the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after October 7, said Lieberman, a political consultant who often hosts US delegations visiting settlements.
“Having friends and voices like these at the highest places in the US helps us,” he said of Lee and US 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 requests for comment.
Since October 7, Lieberman and others have stepped up their efforts, hoping to influence the position of the Republican Party ahead of the November US election that could return Trump to office.
Lieberman and a team of resident officials pressed the case in meetings with Johnson and Lee, among others, in Washington last month, according to a statement from the team.
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. People Reuters spoke to described grassroots settler groups, members of Israel's religious right and hardline Christians working to convince Trump and the Republican Party to end long-standing US support for the Palestinian Authority, arguing that they rewarded the October 7 violence.
Although Trump has suggested that US policy could change, neither he nor the party has been clear about their position on a Palestinian state if they win the election.
Campaign spokeswoman Caroline Leavitt did not respond to questions about Trump's views on settlements and the future of 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 charted the path to a Palestinian state 30 years ago and supported what is known as the two-state solution. The Palestinians and many countries, including the United States, say Israeli settlements in the West Bank violate international law on occupied territory and note ongoing attacks that hinder the state's ambitions. On Friday, the UN's highest court ruled that the settlements were illegal. Israel called the decision “absolutely wrong”
The war in Gaza has renewed pressure, including the public appearance of US President Joe Biden, for a negotiated Palestinian state that neighbors Israel, which the Palestinians foresee including the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem.
Within Israel itself, two states remain the most popular option for peace, a May poll by Tel Aviv University showed, although support fell to just 33% of respondents, down from 43% before Oct. 7.
However, the annexation of the West Bank by Israel and limiting the rights of Palestinians living there, an option favored by some settlers, was supported by 32% of Israelis, up from 27% before October 7. the poll showed.
Ohad Tal, a lawyer for the hard-line Zionist movement who lives in Gush Etzion, said settler leaders who want to take over West Bank lands forever are looking more to Trump and his evangelical allies for support.
“One of our main goals right now is to strengthen communication with these groups,” Tal said of evangelical Christians. “We are fighting the same war.”
'SAVE GOD'S COUNTRY'
Israeli Rabbi Pesach Wolicki has long encouraged cooperation between Israel's religious right and what he calls the American Zionists, evangelicals who see the fulfillment of the prophecy about the return of the Jews to Judea and Samaria in the Bible, most of which are in the West Bank and were taken into captivity. and was captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war.
From the night of October 7, Wolicki said, he began to gather like-minded leaders together in a campaign they call “Save God's World” that aims to influence Trump and the Republican Party to reject the two-state solution, using US religions. Media and conferences to influence Biden's opposition to the state of Palestine.
Keep Land of God says it has grown into a coalition of more than 1,000 Jewish and Christian religious leaders.
Conservatism and the size of the American evangelical community, numbering in the tens of millions, make it an interesting partner for the Israeli right, said Rachel Moore, who also received delegations from members of the US Congress and lives in the Gush Etzion neighborhood of Neve. Daniel.
“There's a perception that only the Christian community gets it,” Moore said, referring to the political distance some right-wing Israelis feel over the liberalism of many US Jews, particularly regarding the ongoing settlement of the West Bank.
The fear of Christians trying to convert Jews makes such engagements a point of contention in Israel.
Southern Baptist pastor Tony Perkins, president of the evangelical advocacy group the Family Research Council, has been instrumental in bringing together Christian conservatives and Israelis and has appeared at Save God's Country events. As a delegate to the Republican National Committee, Perkins is pushing to keep Israel at the forefront of the campaign.
He said support for the residents among evangelicals had increased after the attacks by Hamas, which killed about 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and kidnapped about 150 people, according to Israeli figures. Israel's subsequent war in Gaza has killed more than 38,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza's health ministry.
A Pew poll in February found 33% of white Protestants in the US support the idea of a one-state controlled Israel, up four percentage points from 2022 and twice as many respondents.
Perkins, who visited Gush Etzion in March and met again with Netanyahu, was the first advocate to bring members of the US Congress to the West Bank settlements, said Heather Johnston, an Israel expert on Bible 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 many Republican members of Congress to the settlements, which were rarely visited by US officials.
'JUDEA AND SAMARIA'
Save God's Country convened on April 15 at the headquarters of the Heritage Foundation, a leading think tank on Washington's Capitol Hill.
Speakers included Senator and former Florida governor Rick Scott, Israeli lawmaker Tal and Congresswoman Claudia Tenney, who in March introduced a bill in the House of Representatives to use the biblical name Judah and Samaria in official US documents instead of the West Bank.
The bill has been referred to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. Judea and Samaria is the preferred name for right-wing Israel.
Scott's office did not respond to requests for comment. A spokesman for Tenney declined to comment.
As of October 7, the Netanyahu government has accelerated plans to build in the West Bank, including Gush Etzion, at the fastest pace in 30 years, according to the Israeli NGO Peace Now, an Israeli NGO that tracks and opposes West Bank settlements.
The expansion has “one purpose, to drive Palestinians out of their land,” said Juliette Banoura, a Bethlehem resident who studies settlements.
The number of Israelis in the West Bank has grown by a third to 700,000 in the past decade, the UN says, about 10 percent of Israel's population is Jewish.
Settler violence has exploded over the past year, prompting US and EU sanctions against individuals and organizations that they blame for the increase. All the people Reuters spoke to condemned such violence.
David Friedman, who became Israel's ambassador in 2020 promoted Trump's plan for a limited Palestinian state, which now advocates a single, expanded state of Israel without full citizenship for the Palestinians, an arrangement he likened to the dialogue with Puerto Rico. He said he had not discussed the plan with Trump.
Residents of Puerto Rico, an impoverished US territory, are considered US citizens but cannot vote in presidential elections.
Denying Palestinian citizenship leads to further conflicts, said Nabil Abu Rudeineh, spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
“In order to live in peace in this area, they must reach an agreement with the Palestinians,” he said.
