Editorial Roundup: U.S.

Excerpts from recent editorials in the United States and abroad: May 19 The Boston Globe on U.S. aid to Israel should be a force for peace: Israelis deserve to live in safety without fear of attacks that indiscriminately target civilians. Palestinians deserve basic human rights – and democratic rights – including that of self-determination, safety from violence, and freedom from forced removal from their homes by the Israeli military. Everyone living in the region deserves peace. The best way to achieve these outcomes is through a two-state solution and an agreement among the Israeli military, Jewish extremists, and Islamist militant groups that they will, at last, cease the violence. The United States is currently doing little to help achieve these outcomes – both by underutilizing what leverage it has and by abetting Israel in its efforts to expand into Palestinian territories in violation of international agreements. As conflict in the region escalates, the Biden administration and Congress need to make clear that the ongoing military aid to Israel must be used to help, not hinder, the goal of peaceful coexistence and a two-state solution. The failings of US policy to achieve peace have only become more apparent and acute. The US government gives Israel $3.8 billion in annual military aid without asking for protection of Palestinians’ rights in return. Some of that aid directly enables Israel to force evictions of Palestinians and expand its settlements, including of the kind that were recently planned in a neighborhood of East Jerusalem, sparking the latest spate of violence. Human Rights Watch has documented that US-manufactured and US-supplied technology, such as Caterpillar bulldozers, which Israel purchases through the US military aid it receives, have been used to demolish Palestinian homes. This kind of unchecked use of US military financing has, in recent years, pushed Israel in the direction of abandoning the two-state solution, in which Palestinians would eventually have their own country in what are now Israeli-occupied territories. In the last two decades alone, Israel has significantly eroded the viability of the two-state solution by more than doubling its settler population in the West Bank – the territory that would comprise the bulk of a future Palestinian state. That’s why, if the United States is serious about brokering a peace deal between Israelis and Palestinians, it must begin putting conditions on the aid it provides in order to ensure that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s expansionary government stops going down the dangerous path of de facto annexation of Palestinian land. To be sure, Israel is not the only party in this deadly conflict that has committed atrocities. While the Israeli government has indiscriminately bombed residential buildings, schools, and hospitals, the Islamist militant group Hamas continues to also commit war crimes against Israelis. The violent extremists Hamas recruits must be held accountable for their attacks and human rights abuses. The United States should remain steadfast in ensuring that Israel has the capacity to defend itself against any real threats, be they the rockets fired by Hamas or Iran’s threat to wipe out the Jewish state.