President Obama’s chief of staff Denis McDonough on Monday made a striking announcement on behalf of the administration by telling a crowd of Jewish-American political activists that Israel’s military “occupation” of the West Bank must end as he pushed back against comments made by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu both before and after his recent reelection victory.
“An occupation that has lasted for almost 50 years must end,” said McDonough at the annual J Street conference in Washington, DC. “Israel cannot maintain military control of another people indefinitely.”
J Street is billed as the more liberal, pro-Israel lobby group which in recent years has tried to offset the more hawkish American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, known as AIPAC.
Though Israel’s domination of the West Bank and its continued building of settlements on captured Palestinian lands has long been considered a violation of international law and is the basis for some much of the ongoing conflict, the U.S. government—including the Obama administration—has widely supported Israel’s activities, defended it from international sanctions at the United Nations, provided the Israeli military with a constant flow of aid, and rarely, if ever, employed the term “occupation” despite its commonplace use elsewhere in the world when describing the situation.
McDonough’s stronger use of language was widely seen as a public declaration of continued frustration by the administration regarding statements made by Netanyahu ahead of Israel elections that took place last week. Not only did the Prime Minister foreswear publicly his support for the two-state solution—a commitment to the so-called “peace process” that has been the basis for international efforts to end the conflict—but he also employed racially-charged language against Israeli-Arabs during the elections as he used fear-mongering to warn Jewish voters in Israel that their Arab neighbors were “voting in droves” to destroy Israel. Though Netanyahu has made efforts to walk back both comments, McDonough expressed the White House’s reluctance to accept these new assurances.
“We cannot simply pretend that those comments were never made, or that they don’t raise questions about the prime minister’s commitment to achieving peace through direct negotiations,” McDonough told the crowd.
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