BLUF: "Keep God’s Land gathered on April 15 at the headquarters of the Heritage Foundation, the leading conservative think-tank on Washington’s Capitol Hill.
"Speakers included Republican Senator and former Florida governor Rick Scott, Israeli lawmaker Tal and Republican Congresswoman Claudia Tenney of New York, 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 House Committee on Foreign Affairs. “Judea and Samaria” is right-wing Israelis’ preferred term.”
. . .
"David Friedman, who as ambassador to Israel in 2020 developed Trump’s plan for a limited Palestinian state, now advocates for a single, expanded Israel without full citizenship for Palestinians, an arrangement he likened in an interview to Puerto Rico. He said he had not discussed the plan with Trump."
That such an event referred to above would take place at the Heritage Foundation should come as no surprise. Unless one is on the “Right” side of what is billed as a “Left-Right Alliance” of the Quincy Institute. In which case, it’s an example of Heritage’s “Third way Foreign Policy Restraint!” That is, in my opinion, a masterpiece of propaganda on a scale of Goebbels, as to be expected of what appears to be a Charles Koch Information Operation:
‘Fighting the same battle’: After Oct. 7, settlers court Republican evangelicals
Groups, including one founded hours after start of Hamas onslaught, fund visits for prominent GOP officials: ‘Having friends and voices like that in very high places in the US helps us’
20 July 2024
Reuters — Ruth Lieberman, a settler in the West Bank, is determined to thwart international pressure for a sovereign Palestinian state. And her friendships with prominent United States Republicans from the party’s religious right are helping, she says.
Weeks after Hamas led the thousands-strong October 7 attack on southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages, Lieberman hosted pro-Israel, conservative US Senator Mike Lee of Utah, a Mormon, for a Shabbat meal in her family home, Senate records show.
The conversation turned to Palestinian statehood, and Lieberman told Lee the attack had hardened Israeli opposition to the idea, she said in an interview from her home near Bethlehem, in Alon Shvut, within one of the West Bank’s largest clusters of settlements, known as Gush Etzion. Lee did not respond to requests for comment.
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Such visits are helping align the views of senior Republican Party officials with settlers and the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the wake of October 7, said Lieberman, a political consultant who often hosts US delegations visiting settlements.
“Having friends and voices like that in very high places in the US helps us,” she said of Lee and US House Speaker Mike Johnson, an evangelical Christian who visited her family in February 2020 during the presidency of Donald Trump, long before becoming speaker. Johnson did not respond to requests for comment.
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Ever since October 7, Lieberman and others have intensified their efforts, hoping to influence the Republican Party’s position ahead of the November US election that could return Trump to office.
Republicans Speaker of the House Mike Johnson of Louisiana, left, Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, center, and Rep. Chip Roy of Texas arrive to talk to reporters about requiring American citizenship to vote in national elections, as they introduce the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, at the Capitol in Washington, DC, May 8, 2024. (AP/J. Scott Applewhite)
Lieberman and a delegation of settler officials pressed the case at meetings 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 people Reuters spoke to described grassroots groups of settlers, members of Israel’s religious right and conservative Christians working to convince Trump and the Republican Party to drop longstanding US support for a Palestinian state, arguing it rewarded the October 7 violence.
While Trump has suggested US policy could change, neither he nor the party have been explicit about their position towards a Palestinian state if they win the election.
Campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt did not reply to questions about Trump’s views on settlements and the future of Palestinians. She said Israel had never had a better friend in the White House than Trump.
Construction of new housing in the West Bank settlement of Alon Shvut, in Gush Etzion, October 3, 2022. (Gershon Elinson/Flash90)
The US backed the 1993 Oslo Accords, which charted a pathway to Palestinian statehood, supporting what is known as the two-state solution.
Palestinians and most countries, including the United States, say Israel’s West Bank settlements violate international law and mark an ongoing encroachment that blocks aspirations of statehood. On Friday, the top United Nations court ruled that Israel’s 56-year-long rule in “the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967” is “illegal,” and that it is obligated to bring its presence in that territory to an end “as rapidly as possible.” Israel called the ruling “fundamentally wrong.”
The Gaza war has revived pressure, including publicly from US President Joe Biden, for a negotiated Palestinian nation neighboring Israel, which Palestinians foresee including the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem.
Within Israel itself, two states remain the most popular way to peace, a May poll by Tel Aviv University showed, though support fell to only 33 percent of respondents, down from 43% before October 7.
Israeli settlers hurl stones and set fire to cars in the village of Burin, in the northern West Bank on February 25, 2023. (Jaafar Ashtiyeh/AFP)
However, annexation of the West Bank by Israel and limiting rights for Palestinians living there, an option favored by some settlers, had the support of 32% of Israelis, up from 27% before October 7. It is seen as an increasingly likely outcome, the poll showed.
Ohad Tal, a lawmaker with the hardline far-right Religious Zionism party who lives in Gush Etzion, said settler leaders who seek to annex West Bank lands permanently were increasingly looking to Trump and his evangelical allies for support.
“It’s one of our main goals right now to strengthen connections with these groups,” Tal said of evangelical Christians. “We are fighting the same battle.”
Religious Zionism party member Ohad Tal speaks to voters at a home in the West Bank settlement of Efrat, in Gush Etzion, October 27, 2022. (Gershon Elinson/Flash90)
‘Keep God’s land’
Israeli Rabbi Pesach Wolicki has long advocated for cooperation between Israel’s religious right and what he calls America’s Christian Zionists, evangelicals who see prophecy being fulfilled with the return of Jews to the biblical Judea and Samaria, much of which lies in the West Bank and was captured by Israel in the 1967 Six Day War.
Starting on the night of October 7, Wolicki said, he began gathering similar-minded leaders together in a campaign they called “Keep God’s Land” that aims to influence Trump and the Republican Party to reject a two-state solution, using US religious media outlets and conferences to lobby against Biden’s argument for a Palestinian state.
Keep God’s Land says it has grown into a coalition of more than 1,000 Jewish and Christian faith leaders.
View of the West Bank settlement of Neve Daniel, in Gush Etzion, June 29, 2020. (Gershon Elinson/Flash90)
The conservatism and size of the US evangelical community, which numbers in the tens of millions, makes it an appealing ally for the Israeli right, said Rachel Moore, who has also received delegations of US Congress members and lives in the Gush Etzion settlement of Neve Daniel.
“There’s a perception that only the Christian community gets it,” said Moore, referring to the political distance some right-wing Israelis feel from the liberal stance of many US Jews, especially over the ongoing settlement of the West Bank.
Fears of Christians trying to convert Jews make such engagement contentious in Israel.
Southern Baptist pastor Tony Perkins, president of the evangelical advocacy group the Family Research Council, has been another important figure in aligning Christian and Israeli conservatives and has been featured at Keep God’s Land events.
As a Republican National Committee delegate, Perkins is pushing to keep Israel a priority in the campaign. He said support for settlers among evangelicals rose after October 7.
Pastor Tony Perkins, right, president of the socially conservative Family Research Council Republican, shakes hands with the Republican nominee and former US President Donald Trump, at the Pray Vote Stand Summit at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington, DC, September 15, 2023. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images/AFP)
A Pew survey in February found 33% of US white evangelical Protestants supported the idea of a single state under Israeli control, up by four percentage points from 2022 and twice as high as the average respondent.
Perkins, who visited Gush Etzion in March and also met Netanyahu, was an early advocate for bringing US Congress members to West Bank settlements, said Heather Johnston, a specialist on Israel in Biblical prophecy and CEO of the US Israel Education Association.
In recent years, groups including Lieberman’s foundation and USIEA have organized privately financed trips by dozens of mostly Republican members of Congress to the settlements, which were previously rarely visited by US officials.
Settlers walk with an assembled metal Star of David and other construction materials toward the site of a new outpost by the Palestinian village of al-Jabaah near the settlements of Gush Etzion, southwest of Bethlehem in the West Bank on January 1, 2023. (Hazem Bader/AFP)
‘Judea and Samaria’
Keep God’s Land gathered on April 15 at the headquarters of the Heritage Foundation, the leading conservative think-tank on Washington’s Capitol Hill.
Speakers included Republican Senator and former Florida governor Rick Scott, Israeli lawmaker Tal and Republican Congresswoman Claudia Tenney of New York, 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 House Committee on Foreign Affairs. “Judea and Samaria” is right-wing Israelis’ preferred term.
Scott’s office did not respond to requests for comment. A spokesperson for Tenney declined to comment.
Republican Congresswoman Claudia Tenney of New York speaks during a hearing of the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, June 12, 2024. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images/AFP)
Since October 7, Netanyahu’s government has accelerated to the fastest pace in 30 years plans to build on West Bank land, including in Gush Etzion, according to Israeli NGO Peace Now, which tracks and opposes West Bank settlements.
This expansion has “one goal, which is displacing Palestinians from their lands,” charged Juliette Banoura, a Bethlehem resident who researches 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% of Israel’s Jewish population.
Settler violence has exploded over the past year, prompting US and European Union sanctions on people and entities they blame for the escalation. All the people Reuters spoke to denounced such violence.
David Friedman, who as ambassador to Israel in 2020 developed Trump’s plan for a limited Palestinian state, now advocates for a single, expanded Israel without full citizenship for Palestinians, an arrangement he likened in an interview to Puerto Rico. He said he had not discussed the plan with Trump.
Then-US ambassador to Israel David Friedman during a visit in the West Bank settlement of Efrat, in Gush Etzion, February 20, 2020. (Gershon Elinson/Flash90)
Residents of Puerto Rico, an impoverished US territory, are considered US citizens but cannot vote in presidential elections.
Denying Palestinians statehood leads to more conflict, said Nabil Abu Rudeineh, spokesperson for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
“To live peacefully in the area, they have to reach an agreement with the Palestinians,” he said.
