Palestinian activists in the US have blasted a White House request that Israel avoids any provocative actions in the occupied West Bank ahead of President Joe Biden visit next month.
This came on Friday after the Axios news website reported that Washington had asked Israel to halt home demolitions, evictions of Palestinians, and any decisions on illegal settlement building “until after Biden’s visit” in mid-July.
“The Biden administration doesn’t want us to create any crisis in the West Bank… They want quiet and calm,” Axios quoted a senior Israeli official as saying.
The activists said the request highlights the “magnitude of this administration’s weakness” and its inability to come up with a coherent policy toward Palestinians.
Several Palestinian-Americans told Middle East Eye that the plea was not a surprise and cemented in their view how the Biden administration and previous US governments view Palestinians living under Israeli occupation.
“If these comments indicate anything, it’s that the Biden administration has neither a vision nor a plan to deal with the situation in the occupied Palestinian territories,” Osama Abuirshaid, executive director of American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), told MEE.
Abuirshaid underlined that Biden appears to be “begging for some kind of Israeli calm … so as not to cause him any embarrassment.”
Axios said despite the reported request, Israeli leaders could not make any such promises, citing “the domestic political complexities of halting such actions.”
“Unfortunately, even this humiliating plea may fall on deaf ears. The Israeli government is fully aware of the magnitude of this administration’s weakness and can care less about the US president’s embarrassment or loss of political capital despite unfettered US support to Israel,” Abuirshaid said.
The Palestinian activists also told the Middle East Eye about decades of unfruitful US-led negotiations around their future, saying they do not see tangible policy being pursued by the Biden administration in relation to the occupied Palestinian territories.
“Until now, it has not been possible to talk about a political approach by the Biden administration towards the Palestinians,” Abuirshaid said.
“This administration has yet to offer Palestinians a new horizon. Instead, it demands Palestinians to preserve Israel’s security and ensure calm, while continuing to willingly turn a blind eye to Israel’s crimes and provocations.”
Iyad el-Baghdadi, a Palestinian human rights campaigner, censured Biden in a post on his Twitter handle as a “deeply racist man who cares more about having a pleasant trip to an apartheid regime than about Palestinian human rights.”
Since Biden came into office, as the UN data show, Israel has demolished more than 1,200 Palestinian-owned structures in the occupied West Bank and rendered more than 1,600 Palestinians homeless.
More than 20,000 Palestinian-owned housing units are at risk of demolition in the occupied al-Quds.
Israel has already occupied thousands of acres of Palestinian agricultural lands to construct and expand new illegal settler units in various areas in the West Bank.
The Tel Aviv regime also plans to force out Palestinian families from the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in an attempt to replace them with settlers. That plan sparked days of fighting between Gaza-based Hamas and the Israeli regime in May last year.
More than 600,000 Israelis live in over 230 settlements built since the 1967 Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and al-Quds.
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All Israeli settlements are illegal under international law. The United Nations Security Council has condemned Israel’s settlement activities in the occupied territories in several resolutions.
Palestinians want the West Bank as part of a future independent state, with East al-Quds as its capital.
Israel to begin live-fire training during Palestinians’ forced expulsion
The Israeli occupation forces said on Friday that they would conduct a live-fire military exercise in the south of al-Khalil (Hebron) in the occupied West Bank starting next week, with the Palestinian residents saying the move was an attempt to force them out of their homeland.
The drills, which will include light arms training, are scheduled to take place from Monday until Wednesday in Masafer Yatta, a Palestinian community where more than 1,000 Palestinian are facing imminent expulsion.
Palestinians living in Masafer Yatta said the use of live fire — the first in the area after 20 years — is a scare tactic to facilitate their eviction by pushing them out.
“This will not be the only military training they conduct, they will do it constantly and move from one location to another,” Palestinian activist Jamal Juma told Middle East Eye.
“So this is a way they think is a smart way, instead of loading these people in trucks and throwing them outside. They destroy the Palestinian resources, take it over so the Palestinians will be blocked in a densely populated area, isolated in ghettos, another [manifestation] of the apartheid system.”
The evictions have been widely condemned by rights groups.
In late May, more than a dozen members of US Congress sent a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, calling on the White House to take immediate action to halt the forced expulsions which they said “would amount to a war crime.”
