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Friends,

Today, Israeli authorities rubber-stamped Finance Minister Bezalel
Smotrich's request to build 3,401 homes in the long-delayed E-1 settlement
project in the heart of the West Bank.

It’s not just another settlement. It’s a deliberate, calculated move – as
Smotrich openly admitted – to split the West Bank in two and “bury a
Palestinian state.”

But he will fail.

Bulldozers, concrete and settlements can’t bury a people’s hopes and
dreams for freedom and self-determination. As Jews, it’s a truth we know
intimately: 2,000 years of oppression and persecution never destroyed our
dream of being a free people in our own land.

This will not stop Palestinian statehood. It will not halt international
moves toward recognition. It will not bring peace or security. Quite the
opposite.

For decades, Republican and Democratic administrations alike pressed
Israel to freeze settlement expansion in E-1. But restraint has been
replaced by a green light: On Monday, Trump’s Evangelical Ambassador Mike
Huckabee said Israel has the “right” to move forward with the “massive”
E-1 project.

We must be clear-eyed that settlements like E-1 make peace harder – but we
must also reject the spin from the settler movement that they make a
Palestinian state impossible.

They do not.

Smotrich has said the quiet part out loud. Now is the time to make our
voices heard. This White House (or the next) still has the leverage to
limit this and blunt the damage – as does Congress, the American Jewish
community and other countries around the world. We must all speak out.

To be pro-Israel today means refusing to allow extremists to shred
Israel’s founding values of peace, justice, democracy and equality. It
means refusing to send yet another generation of young Israelis to guard
illegal outposts and fight endless wars as messianic extremists drag
Israel deeper into isolation and pariah status.

That’s why we’re continuing our work to press Congress and the next
generation of US leaders to take a bold, strong new approach – and to
abandon the failed, outdated approaches of the past.

We can only do that with your support. Thank you sincerely for standing
with us.

Jeremy Ben-Ami
President, J Street

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J Street is the political home for pro-Israel, pro-peace, pro-democracy
Americans who want Israel to be secure, democratic and the national home of the
Jewish people. Working in American politics and the Jewish community, we
advocate policies that advance shared US and Israeli interests as well as Jewish
and democratic values, leading to a two-state solution to the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict.



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