[ ]J Street [ ]
Friend,

President Biden and his team have returned from the first Middle East
visit of his presidency, and the takeaways for J Street are mixed.

First, the good news -- and there is some.

It’s more than welcome for J Street to see the President reaffirm his
commitment to a two-state solution with borders based on the pre-1967
Green Line with land swaps. This effectively rolls back the position taken
by the Trump administration and returns the US to alignment with the rest
of the world. It was also notable that Israel’s new Prime Minister Yair
Lapid stated publicly his belief that a “two-state solution is a guarantee
for a strong, democratic Israel.” These are words not heard from an
Israeli leader in nearly 14 years.

J Street also welcomes the President’s strong reaffirmation of the
US-Israel relationship. His words represent a vital push back against the
argument that critiques of Israeli policy and actions by members of the
Democratic Party are at odds with his Party’s deep commitment to Israel’s
security.

There were a number of welcome tangible announcements on the trip as well,
including financial assistance to hospitals in East Jerusalem and to the
UN relief agency that provides health and education services to
Palestinians. Notably, the President visited East Jerusalem unaccompanied
by Israeli officials and did not fly the Israeli flag on American vehicles
during the visit -- both important symbolic affirmations of Palestinian
interests in East Jerusalem and the administration’s view that the status
of the city remains to be resolved.

Palestinian access to 4G broadband will expand, crossings at the Allenby
Bridge will be easier for Palestinians and creative ideas for bringing
clean energy from the West Bank to Gaza to power water and sewage
treatment are being advanced. These are all incremental but positive steps
to improve daily life for Palestinians.

Further steps toward Israel’s integration with its neighbors are also very
welcome. J Street has -- since its founding -- believed that the Arab
Peace Initiative provides a route toward resolving the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict by offering full normalization of relations with Israel by all
Arab countries as incentive for establishing a Palestinian state. The
Kingdom of Saudi Arabia made clear on this visit that this remains their
preferred framework for broader peace, and that position was reaffirmed in
the joint declaration the President signed in Jeddah.

All that said, the President’s visit and the messages the administration
has delivered publicly on the conflict over the past 18 months fall well
short of the minimum needed from fruitful US leadership if we hope to see
the actual conflict Israel faces resolved.

At every step of the process of normalization, the United States needs to
ensure that the Palestinians are a full and equal partner in the emerging
regional architecture. Only with full Palestinian participation can
regional integration catalyze progress toward Palestinian statehood and
comprehensive peace, rather than serve as an end-run around it.

American opposition to deepening occupation and de facto annexation needs
to be louder and bolder. There is no reason to shy away from using the
term “occupation” to describe what is happening on the West Bank and in
Gaza. The President and his team must be explicit about American
opposition to settlement expansion, home demolitions, evictions and
settler violence.

In particular, they must work to prevent the forced displacement of
approximately 1,000 Palestinians from the Masafer Yatta region of the
occupied West Bank, as J Street and other organizations collectively
representing millions of Jewish Americans implored the President to do
[ [link removed] ]in a letter last week.

There must be clearer accountability for such acts as the killing of the
Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu-Akleh. The efforts by Israel
to label Palestinian NGOs as terrorist organizations must be publicly
rebuked by the US as they are now being by European governments. The US
must overcome Israeli resistance to the re-opening of its consulate
dealing with Palestinians in Jerusalem.

And, regionally, the most important act of American diplomacy to ratchet
down conflict and tension would be to re-enter the Iran nuclear agreement.
It was good to see the President reaffirm his view that the surest path to
preventing Iran from ever getting a nuclear weapon is through diplomacy.
It was equally good to hear the signals from the UAE that it is open to
diplomatic engagement with Tehran and to “rebuilding bridges.”

The steps necessary to re-enter the agreement may have a perceived
domestic political risk in the eyes of the Biden team, but Israeli
security leaders, global non-proliferation experts and now perhaps even
the UAE are signaling that the world was a safer and better place with the
deal (known as the JCPOA) in place prior to Donald Trump breaking it four
years ago.

In short, while the President took some limited steps in the right
direction, his trip was far from the visit that J Street would have
advocated for. The dire state of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict demands
bolder action and leadership. Kicking the can down the road will come to
be seen as a tragic mistake if and when the situation unravels.

Unending occupation and de facto annexation without meaningful American
opposition is facilitating the loss not only of hope but of the practical
possibility of Palestinian statehood. The emerging one-state reality is
not a solution to the conflict, as some on the right and left may
theorize, but rather an accelerant for deepening despair and heightened
tension and violence.

It will take strong leadership -- American, Israeli and Palestinian -- to
change course away from this emerging one-state nightmare, which
undermines Israel’s future, the Palestinians’ quest for freedom and
self-determination, and American interests.

At J Street, we remain committed to pressing for the bold, transformative
and responsible steps that we know are needed.

Thank you,
Jeremy Ben-Ami, J Street President


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J Street is the political home for pro-Israel, pro-peace 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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