Speaking in Brazil recently, Secretary of State Antony Blinken unceremoniously announced that the Biden administration considered Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria as illegal under international law.
After more than three years of appeasing and enriching the Islamic Republic of Iran, alienating vital allies like Saudi Arabia and Israel, and allowing American tax dollars to flow once more to Palestinian terrorists, Team Biden has taken yet another counterproductive step by embracing the same failed anti-Israeli Washington orthodoxies that plagued the Obama administration and have delivered decades of disappointment.
During my time as secretary of state, under the leadership of President Trump, we decided to approach the Middle East differently. We deterred Iran instead of making deals with it, and we built a coalition of nations to help maintain that deterrence.
We established the Abraham Accords, which saw many Muslim nations finally recognize Israel’s right to exist. We supported our friend and ally Israel by stopping the flow of American taxpayer dollars that propped up Palestinian terror, as well as by recognizing Israel’s sovereignty in places like the Golan Heights.
Crucially, we also took direct aim at the underlying lie that Israel was an illegitimate ‘occupier’ in the regions of Judea and Samaria – which encompass much of the West Bank – by enacting a strictly factual and legal policy that has since become known as ‘The Pompeo Doctrine.’
This policy made clear that Israel exists within its present territory with legal title and sovereign legitimacy as a matter of international law. We did so only after careful study of history and precedent both in the international community and within the State Department’s own record; our decision was consistent with policies going back to President Reagan, and even to Undersecretary of State Eugene Rostow, who negotiated the 1967 U.N. resolution that set out peace terms between Israel and her Arab neighbors following the Six-Day War.
More importantly, our decision was also based on historical and biblical truth: Judea and Samaria are rightful parts of Israel’s historical homeland. These regions are full of historic sites that reflect their immense religious and cultural importance to the Jewish people, including Hebron – the burial place of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; Shiloh, the resting place of the tabernacle; and Shechem, the site of Joseph’s tomb.
Having personally traveled through Judea and Samaria, I have seen many of these incredible places along Route 60 – the ‘Biblical Highway.’ Their existence confirms the truth: The Jewish people have a right to live there, and the Jewish nation state has a right to build communities there. It is Israel’s land.
President Biden has now decided to ignore this truth, obtusely viewing it as an obstacle to peace and making the same mistake favored by his predecessor in the Obama administration.
Undermining Israel’s right to exist in the Jewish people’s homeland deepens and prolongs the conflict. It is not Israeli settlements that are an obstacle to peace – it is the unwillingness of the Palestinians to come to the table honestly and acknowledge Israel’s right to exist, the gross atrocities committed by Hamas on Oct. 7, and Hamas’ continued existence. Those are the true obstacles to peace.
Disturbingly, Team Biden’s reversal of the ‘Pompeo Doctrine’ has just as much to do with satisfying its far-left progressive base as it does with implementing a flawed vision for peace.
At an event in Dearborn, Michigan a few weeks ago, Jon Finer, one of President Biden’s deputy national security advisers, told an irate crowd that his administration’s lukewarm statements of support for Israel were ‘missteps’ that he regretted had left a ‘very damaging impression,’ while Biden himself recently characterized Israel’s efforts to destroy Hamas as ‘over the top.’
And with an election cycle fast approaching, the president has directed his administration to develop an Israel-Palestinian ‘peace plan’ that includes ‘the establishment of a Palestinian state,’ and reports have surfaced that the administration has been conducting investigations into possible Israeli war crimes in Gaza.
Amid a war and only a handful of months after it suffered the worst antisemitic attacks seen since the Holocaust, Biden is now pressuring Israel to surrender its safety and security – all to win an election later this year.
Biden is trading true peace for votes; counter to what is in Israel’s best interest. It is gross and indecent.
In an effort to appease the apparently pro-Hamas left in this country, Biden has bought into the same Washington lie that will only lead to more conflict and reward the wicked acts of terror perpetrated by Hamas on Oct. 7. America, Israel and the world deserve better.
Lasting peace will only come when Iran’s influence is diminished and deterred and terrorist groups in the region are rendered impotent. In November, I hope the American people reject these failed policies and elect leaders who will clean up Biden’s mess.