Israel reduced settler housing plans by 39% to appease US

[Dan193]

Israel reduced settler housing plans by 39% to appease US, source says
Israel had initially intended advance plans for 3,623 units but dropped 1,400 from the agenda.
By TOVAH LAZAROFF, LAHAV HARKOV
AUGUST 12, 2021

Israel reduced by 39% the number of West Bank settler homes the Civil Administration plans to advance next week for authorization with an eye toward appeasing US President Joe Biden’s administration, which opposes such activity.

initial intention was to advance plans for 3,623 homes, but for diplomatic reasons 1,400 units were dropped from the agenda of the Higher Planning Council for Judea and Samaria, a settler source told The Jerusalem Post.

The source added that, with an eye to Washington, council plans to advance 2,223 new settler homes was deliberately linked to an unusual Civil Administration hearing next week on the authorization of 863 Palestinian homes in Area C of the West Bank.
"We have to be sensitive to the Americans," a senior diplomatic source said in explaining the need for a balanced approach on Area C housing.

In the end there is a balanced package that shows that the council is routinely meeting and disproves any claims that there is a "construction freeze," the senior diplomatic source said.

A reasonable amount of Jewish homes will be built, but at the same time Israel has addressed an issue that concerns the US, which is construction for the Palestinians in Area C, the source added.
The State Department, however, still attacked the move.

“We believe it is critical for Israel and the Palestinian Authority to refrain from unilateral steps that exacerbate tensions and fundamentally undercut efforts to advance a negotiated two-state solution,” a State Department official told the Post.

“This certainly includes settlement activity which will make achieving a two-state solution much more difficult.  It’s critical to advance steps that will promote calm and reduce tensions,” the official added.
Both plans were simultaneously placed on the council’s agenda on Wednesday in what looked like the start of a new paradigm for settlement housing approvals, which would include units for both Jews and Palestinians in Area C.

It’s almost an exact duplicate of the actions taken by former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he convened the council in January in the waning days of former US president Donald Trump’s administration. At that time the council advanced plans for 780 settler homes as well as a plan that allowed for 140 Palestinian homes in Area C, which is under IDF military and civilian control.
Netanyahu at the time would have also had to keep Biden in mind, given that he was days away from inauguration.

The announcement of the housing plans comes in advance of Bennett’s upcoming meeting with Biden. But it also follows an unusual amount of conversations between Israeli and US officials in which the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been on the agenda.

Eyal Hulata, national security adviser-designate, and Shimrit Meir, foreign policy adviser to the prime minister, were in Washington earlier this month. This week, CIA Director William Burns was in Israel, where he met with both Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Defense Minister Benny Gantz.

A source said that Israel notified the US of the settler housing plans in advance and that Gantz has spoken with the Palestinians.
A senior Israeli source said that in conversations with the US had not involved nitty gritty details about the number of units that would be advanced. Israel developed a model of how to move forward with settlement construction independently.
"We are managing this ourselves and taking everyone into consideration," the source said.

"We are showing that we have a very responsible and balanced policy," the source added.
The Trump administration which supported settlement has been replaced with a government that no longer supports such activity, the senior diplomatic source said.

"We have to figure out how to allow building while keeping up relations for the visit to the US and coordination on Iran," the source added.
But despite the assurances that settlement activity would continue Foreign Minister Yair Lapid at a press conference in Morocco on Thursday hinted that the authorization of settlement plans should be limited to natural growth.

In the history of the settlement movement, population growth has exceeded natural growth, although as the growth rate drops, it becomes increasingly reliant on it. So limiting development to natural growth would be a constriction of settlement expansion.
The “natural growth” terminology is a throwback to the Obama and Bush administrations.
Trump had largely not constrained settlement growth during his administration.

Settler leaders noted the policy change and held two emergency meetings: one on Wednesday night and another on Thursday, when the Yesha Council held a meeting in front of the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem.
Yesha Council head David Elhayani said that “when the government makes the correlation between Israeli and Palestinians building in Area C” then a red line has been crossed.

“It gives a message to the Palestinians that if you build in Area C, we will authorize it,” Elhayani said.
Settler leaders and the Israeli Right hold that all of Area C should be included within Israel’s sovereign borders. The Palestinians in turn hold that all of Area C should be part of their future state. Building is seen as one of the most significant ways to preserve that territory.
Out of the 2,223 settler homes that will be advanced, 1,315 will be deposited for further discussion. This include 399 homes in the Revava settlement, 377 in Kedumim, 156 in Givat Ze’ev, 100 in Elon Moreh, 100 in Sansana, 86 in Ofarim, 45 in Vered Yeriho, 27 in Karnei Shomron, 18 in Alon Shvut and seven in Hermesh.

Another 908 will be validated for final approval. This includes 292 in the Kfar Etzion settlement, 286 in Har Bracha, 105 in Alon Shvut, 83 in Karnei Shomron, 58 in Beit El, 42 in Givat Ze’ev, 28 in Barkan, 14 in Ma’aleh Michmash.

The Palestinian plans for the Civil Administration, which are set for debate next week, include 150 units at al-Masara near Bethlehem and 50 in Khirbat Zakariya in the Gush Etzion region. Three housing approvals in the area of Jenin include 270 units in Bir al-Basha, 233 in al-Masqufa and 160 in Khirbat Aaba.

[Dan193]

A lot of people in the State Department are well known Israel Haters like Hady Amr, Maher Bitar, Uzra Zeya, Reema Dodin and Rob Malley.

https://www.jns.org/opinion/the-problem-with-hady-amr/
The problem with Hady Amr
Biden’s new Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Israel-Palestine isn’t just another policy expert with a history of hostility to Israel.
February 4, 2021

“I was inspired by the Palestinian intifada,” Hady Amr wrote a year after Sept. 11, 2001, discussing his work as the national coordinator of the anti-Israel Middle East Justice Network.

U.S. President Joe Biden has now chosen Amr as a Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Israel-Palestine.

“I have news for every Israeli,” Amr ranted in a column written after Sheikh Salah Shahada, the head of Hamas’s Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, was taken out by an Israeli airstrike in 2002.

Amr warned that Arabs “now have televisions, and they will never, never forget what the Israeli people, the Israeli military and Israeli democracy have done to Palestinian children. And there will be thousands who will seek to avenge these brutal murders of innocents.”

He also threatened Americans that “we, too, shouldn’t be shocked when our military assistance to Israel and our security council vetoes that keep on protecting Israel come back to haunt us.”

The future State Department official was making these threats less than a year after 9/11.

Amr accused Israel of ethnic cleansing and coordinated an organization that had accused Israel of apartheid, making his appointment, like that of Maher Bitar, an anti-Israel activist appointed as the senior director for intelligence on the National Security Council, a statement about the Biden administration’s stance towards the Jewish state.

Amr’s job offer from Biden isn’t surprising. The Beirut-born Amr, who grew up in Saudi Arabia, had dived into politics as the director of ethnic outreach for Al Gore’s failed presidential campaign. And the Biden campaign listed Amr as one of its bundlers, who fueled it with cash.

Biden’s move puts Amr, who has repeatedly advocated for a deal with Hamas and worked closely with a terror state that serves as a major backer of Hamas, in a key policy position.

But Amr isn’t just another foreign-policy expert with a history of hostility to Israel.

“What’s exciting about this project is that it’s a joint project of Brookings and the Qatari Government,” Hady Amr gushed about his old role as the director of the Brookings Doha Center, whose aim he said was to “inform the American public and American policymakers.”

In an article titled “Foreign Powers Buy Influence at Think Tanks,” The New York Times reported that Qatar, an ally of Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood, was the single biggest foreign donor to the Brookings Institute.

“There was a no-go zone when it came to criticizing the Qatari government,” a visiting fellow at the Brookings Doha Center in Qatar in 2009 told the Times.

Amr was the founding director of the Brookings Doha Center and led it between 2006 and 2010. A Times report noted that the institution had forbidden criticism of Qatar. Lawyers interviewed by the paper suggested that some of Brookings’ work with foreign governments merited “registration as foreign agents.” Brookings has not only not done so, its key personnel, like Amr, have gone on to work in important United States government positions.

Amr moved back and forth between Brookings and the U.S. government, working for Brookings Doha and then the State Department, returning to Brookings under the Trump administration before coming back to the State Department under Biden.

Qatar not only provided $14.8 million in funding for the Brookings Doha Center, but its advisory board was co-chaired by Qatar’s former foreign minister and a member of its royal dynasty while its director had formerly worked for the second of the Qatari Emir’s three wives (and the only wife who wasn’t also a cousin), making it obvious that the organization was under Qatari control.

“The center will assume its role in reflecting the bright image of Qatar,” boasted the Qatari Foreign Ministry.

Qatar is a major state sponsor of the Islamic terrorist group Hamas. It has been accused by U.S. government officials of being utilized by Al-Qaeda and the Taliban for fundraising purposes. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, operated out of Qatar. He fled after being warned by a member of the Qatari royal family that the Americans were on to him.

“The Qataris had a history of terrorist sympathies,” the NSC’s former chief counter-terrorism adviser wrote. “It has been true that Qatar has served as a sanctuary for leaders of groups that the U.S. or other countries deem to be terrorist organizations.”

Amr’s backing for Islamists mirrored that of the Qatari regime.

At Brookings Doha, Amr had urged that the “Muslim Brotherhood organizations across the Muslim World should be engaged.” Then he wondered, “in Lebanese and Palestinian society, the faith-based organizations are seen as the least corrupt … Hamas and Hezbollah are often cited by their populations as being non-corrupt. This needs more analysis. Is this the case?”

Over the past few years, Amr has repeatedly urged negotiations with Hamas. When the Trump administration unveiled its proposed peace deal, Amr co-wrote an article declaring that it should be scrapped in favor of focusing on a deal with Hamas. The article provides some insight into the policies that Amr may advance as a Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Israel-Palestine.

“By laying out the terms of a three-way Hamas-Israel-PA/PLO deal now, and building an international consensus around it, the United States could create a pathway toward resolution,” the article argued. That would potentially not only restart Obama’s attempt to impose a plan on Israel, but would do so not only on behalf of the PLO but also of Hamas.

The troubling connections between Qatar, an Islamic terrorist state allied with Iran, that is a major sponsor of the Muslim Brotherhood and its terrorist arm, Hamas, and the influential Brookings Institute think-tank makes Amr’s appointment all the more problematic.

“Our business is to influence policy,” admitted former U.S. ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk. “To be policy-relevant, we need to engage policymakers.”

Indyk, a key anti-Israel figure in the Democrat foreign policy establishment, who worked for Clinton and Obama, partnered with the Qatari government to set up Brookings in Doha.

Amr’s career was fueled by his work with Indyk. After Brookings, he went to work for the State Department and eventually became the Deputy to the Special Envoy for Israeli-Palestinian Negotiations for Economics and Gaza under Obama. Now, after acting as a big-money bundler for Biden, the anti-Israel figure has been rewarded with a major foreign-policy role.

Hady Amr is not the only Brookings Doha alumnus to end up in a top policy position. His appointment may be an opportunity to scrutinize whether employees of an organization that effectively functioned as an arm of a foreign government should be allowed to hold such roles.

[Dan193]

Biden put in charge of NSC intel Maher Bitar, who's a well known BDS apologist who wants to flood Israel with millions of Palestinians so Israel is eliminated.

https://www.jns.org/opinion/biden-puts-anti-israel-bds-activist-in-charge-of-nsc-intel/
Biden puts anti-Israel BDS activist in charge of NSC intel
How did an anti-Israel activist go from helping host a conference for an organization whose speakers have supported Islamic terrorism to a top intelligence job?  January 27, 2021
(January 27, 2021 / JNS)

“Why Is Georgetown Providing a Platform for This Dangerous Group?” asked a 2006 op-ed in The Washington Post.

The group in question was the Palestine Solidarity Movement, a BDS anti-Israel hate group whose conferences had a history of anti-Semitism, supporting Hamas and the murder of Jews. Maher Bitar, one of the executive board members of Students for Justice in Palestine, was one of the principal organizers of the 2006 conference, which was being hosted by Georgetown University’s SJP hate group.

Despite protests from Jewish groups, the Georgetown BDS conference went ahead.

Now, President Joe Biden has picked Maher Bitar as senior director for Intelligence on the National Security Council.

In 2006, the American Jewish Committee was pleading with Georgetown to distance itself from the anti-Israel hate of PSM and SJP. Now the anti-Israel hate occupies the top of the foreign policy establishment and is set to define the foreign policy of the Biden administration.

In his new position, the former anti-Israel activist will coordinate between the White House and the intelligence community, receiving material from intelligence agencies, informing the intelligence community of White House policy and deciding who gets access to secret information.

The job of senior director for Intelligence at the National Security Council is supposed to go to an intelligence professional. How did an anti-Israel activist go from helping host a conference for an organization whose speakers have supported Islamic terrorism to a top intelligence job?

At the PSM conference in Georgetown, Bitar had run a session describing how to best demonize Israel. Next year, he facilitated a Palestinian Student Society summit addressed by Joseph Massad, who had called Israel a “Jewish supremacist state” and praised terrorism.

Massad had also argued that the idea that “any manifestation of hatred against Jews in any geographic location on Earth and in any historical period is ‘anti-Semitism’ smacks of a gross misunderstanding of the European history of anti-Semitism.”

A few years later, Bitar could be found presenting at a Sabeel conference featuring some of the worst bigots like Rebecca Vilkomerson of JVP, who had invited Rasmea Odeh a Palestinian terrorist to address the BDS hate group, and Richard Falk, who had endorsed a book which wondered whether “Hitler might have been right after all.”

Bitar went to work for UNRWA, interned at the misnamed and militantly anti-Israel Foundation for Middle East Peace and studied at Oxford’s Refugee Studies Centre, writing papers on the so-called “Nakba” and on “Palestinian” activism. He appeared to describe Israel’s security barrier as a “segregation wall”

Israel’s “political existence as a state is the cause for Palestinian dispossession and statelessness,” Bitar wrote in one paper. “Israel’s rejection of their right to return remains the main obstacle to finding a durable solution.”

The so-called “right of return” would mean the destruction of Israel.

He helped assemble a publication for BADIL—Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights—a BDS hate group that seeks to eliminate Israel through the Palestinian “right of return” and which has opposed bans on working with terrorists.

The issue in question denounced “Jewish colonization.”

And yet before long, Bitar could be found working for the Office of the Special Envoy for Middle East Peace. From there he went on to serve as the NSC’s director for Israeli and Palestinian Affairs and as Samantha Power’s deputy at the United Nations. In under a decade, Bitar had gone from anti-Israel activism through the private network of BDS organizations to key positions shaping American intelligence and foreign policy at the National Security Council and the United Nations.

Even while Bitar was engaged in anti-Israel activism, he was also volunteering for the Obama campaign, and working for the United Nations. He started working for the State Department’s Office of the Special Envoy for Middle East Peace as an extern while studying for his JD at Georgetown.

In 2016, Bitar came back to Georgetown to tell students that “those of you who might feel conflicted about or even disagree with American policy and want to change it” could do it.

When President Donald Trump was elected, Bitar became the general counsel to House Intelligence Committee Democrats, serving as the top legal adviser to Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and playing a key role in the first Democrat attempt to impeach Trump. Now he’s back at the NSC.

Bitar’s rise through the ranks speaks to the abandonment of Israel by the Democrats and the ineptitude of pro-Israel advocates at fighting the personnel battles that define the government.

During the Obama administration, organizations that claimed to be advocating for Israel would come out to D.C. and take pride in receiving a personal briefing from Bitar about Israel’s security without having a clue about who he was or how hard he must have been laughing at them.

Policy battles aren’t won at the executive level but at the personnel level. The left keeps winning policy battles even when moderates and conservatives win elections because it understands that having its people in a position to make policy matters more than elections.

Obama had put the author of Ethnic Cleansing and the Falling Apart of Palestinian Society in charge of the NSC desk on Israel. Biden put him in charge of NSC intelligence.

“Why Is Georgetown Providing a Platform for This Dangerous Group?” a Washington Post op-ed asked in 2006. The question now is why are Joe Biden and the Democrats?

And what do pro-Israel groups intend to do about it?

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical left and Islamic terrorism.

[Dan193]

Biden put Rob Malley in his administration.
All you need to know about Rob Malley

The Robert Malley - Arafat connection
https://www.camera.org/article/the-robert-malley-8211-arafat-connection/

[Dan193]

https://zoa.org/2021/03/10442530-biden-appoints-another-israel-hater-uzra-zeya/
Biden Appoints Another Israel-Hater: Uzra Zeya
March 3, 2021

First, there was Maher Bitar, a Palestinian-American and anti-Israel BDS activist, whom Biden has appointed to be the senior director of intelligence programs at the National Security Council. In this key intelligence role, Maher Bitar will be ideally situated to learn, for example, about American collaboration with Israel on moves to stop Iran’s nuclear program. Why should we assume Bitar would not try to limit that collaboration, or to alert others about these moves, or to try to influence policy by focusing on international criticism of Israel’s “settlement building,” in an attempt to manufacture an unnecessary crisis between the allies, and to fan its flames thereby turning that crisis into a reason for America to threaten to cut back on military aid to Israel unless it stops enlarging existing, or building new, settlements?

Even without knowing Maher Bitar, a Palestinian and a Muslim, shouldn’t we assume from his lengthy BDS activism that he still harbors a deep anti-Israel animus, and while his outward demeanor may suggest a lack of bias and parti-pris, he may merely be a dab hand at assuming a sober mien of objectivity, while being a master of deception? “War is deceit,” said Muhammad. About Bitar, see here.

A second alarming appointment by the Biden Administration is that of Reema Dodin, a Palestinian-American, who will now be deputy director of the White House Office of Legislative Affairs. In 2002 Dodin expressed her deep understanding of, and sympathy for, all those “desperate people” who became suicide bombers. Addressing a church audience in Loma, California, spreading the gospel of Palestinianism in her interfaith outreach, she said that the Palestinian “suicide bombers were the last resort of a desperate people.” Not a word of sympathy, not in 2002 and not in the 18 years since, for the Israeli victims of those suicide bombers whose “desperation” she finds so understandable. About Reema Dodin, see here and here.

The appointments of Reema Dodin and Maher Bitar are disturbing enough. But, as they say on late-night television ads, wait – there’s more!

Now comes news that Biden has nominated Uzra Zeya, who has a long record of denouncing the “Israel lobby” and the “secret money” it uses to control American politicians, to become undersecretary for civilian security, democracy, and human rights. That’s the very worst place to put her. As to “civilian security,” doesn’t that include security from terrorists – including Islamic terrorists? Uzra Zeya doesn’t seem too interested even in the “civilian security” of the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.

She appears not to care that Hamas and the PLO (which is part of the PA), endanger their own civilians by placing weapons in schools, hospitals, mosques, and apartment buildings. Nor does her support of the despotic and corrupt regimes, of Hamas in Gaza, and the PA in the West Bank, suggest she should be in charge of defending “democracy” anywhere else. Finally, she is entrusted with defending “human rights” around the world – but human rights are trampled on in Gaza and the PA-held territories. She has never spoken out about the absence of “civilian security, democracy, and human rights” in the Palestinian territories. Is Uzra Zeya really the right person to be defending those ideals? A report on this appointment-from-hell is here:

President Joe Biden’s nominee for a top State Department position played a key role in assembling a book on the nefarious influence of the “Israel lobby” while working for an organization that promoted claims about Jewish media control and dual loyalty to Israel.

As a staffer at the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, Uzra Zeya compiled research for a book that argues that “the Israel lobby has subverted the American political process to take control of U.S. Middle East policy” by establishing a secret network of “dirty money” PACs that bribe and extort congressional candidates into taking pro-Israel positions.

Zeya, a former U.S. diplomat who was nominated for undersecretary for civilian security, democracy, and human rights, worked for the Washington Report and its publishing group, the American Educational Trust, in 1989 and 1990. The news outlet is staunchly anti-Israel and has published articles questioning the national loyalty of American Jews and opposing taxpayer funding to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

The Washington Report, for which Uzra Zeya worked for two years, is not merely anti-Israel. To oppose funding of the Holocaust Memorial Museum is antisemitic. To publish articles claiming that the Mossad was behind both the killing of JFK and of the 9/11 attacks is antisemitic.

Zeya’s work for the Washington Report and American Educational Trust raises questions about her views on Israel and could become an obstacle during her confirmation hearings. Biden’s recent hiring moves on foreign policy and conflicting statements from staffers have made it unclear how his administration plans to approach Israel policy issues. White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki recently declined to denounce the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, contradicting statements condemning the movement from Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Biden’s nominee for U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, the Washington Free Beacon recently reported. Biden also tapped anti-Israel activist Maher Bitar for a top intelligence post and is reportedly considering Matt Duss, an outspoken critic of Israel, for a State Department position.

Sean Durns, a research analyst at the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, called the Washington Report a “fringe organization” that has “published content with antisemitic themes,” including claims that the Mossad was behind the JFK assassination and the Sept. 11 attacks.

Organizations like the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs have a history of propagating fringe and sometimes antisemitic conspiracy theories and I think it’s absolutely fair for questions to be raised in any sort of potential hearings,” said Durns.

When it comes time for Uzra Zeya’s confirmation hearings, I assume, optimistically, that she will be asked about her work on the Washington Report. Isn’t it true, she should be asked, that she compile research for a book that argues that “the Israel lobby has subverted the American political process to take control of U.S. Middle East policy” by establishing a secret network of “dirty money” PACs that bribe and extort congressional candidates into taking pro-Israel positions? Presumably she agreed with the book’s thesis at the time.

How did she feel about its accusations now? Did she agree that the “Israel lobby” has “subverted the American political process”? Did she continue to work for the Washington Report even after it had blamed Mossad for the assassination of JFK and the 9/11 attacks? If she had left the magazine before those articles were published, did she ever express her disagreement with their content? Does she still read the Washington Report?

What does Uzra Zeya think her task should be in defending human rights? Does she have any particular concerns about human rights – especially the rights of women, and Christians — in the Palestinian territories? Or in Muslim-majority lands, more generally? Does she think that changing one’s religion should be a basic human right? Does she think that American foreign aid should be withheld from despotic and corrupt regimes, including that of Hamas in Gaza?

What about the PA in the West Bank, where Mahmoud Abbas has accumulated a fortune of $400 million? How does she view Israel? Does Ms. Zeya agree with the vast majority of Americans, who see the Jewish state as a firm ally, that shares our values – democracy and respect for human rights — or does she have another view?

That’s a starter kit of questions. Let’s hope at least some of them are asked, so that Uzra Zeya doesn’t have the smooth sailing she’s no doubt expecting. Make her confirmation hearings a memorable moment.

[Dan193]

Biden also hired Reema Dodin, a Palestinian-American, who will  be deputy director of the White House Office of Legislative Affairs. In 2002 Dodin expressed her deep understanding of and sympathy for all those “desperate people” who became suicide bombers. Addressing an audience in California,  she said that the Palestinian “suicide bombers were the last resort of a desperate people.”

Not a word of sympathy of the Israeli victims massacred by these Palestinian terrorists.

[Nachus]

                                                                                                                        

Israel must stop seeking the approval of the ‘nations’
by ‘appeasing’ the United States or anyone else and
instead continue their so-called ‘expansionism’ in their
own land thereby solidifying their sovereignty.

[Kahane-Was-Right BT]

Even the full 100% of 3,623 homes is a pittance and a joke.   Settlement council begging for pennies.   If the govt would just release the brakes, there would be massive growth and an end to housing shortage