Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) is blocking an Israel-related bill, saying that last-minute changes to the bill diminished longstanding support for the Jewish state, congressional sources confirmed to the Washington Free Beacon on Monday.
The bill is the Israel Relations Normalization Act of 2021 which is intended to solidify congressional support for the Abraham Accords. Last-minute changes to the bill regarding US policy on Israel and Palestinian statehood caused Cruz to withdraw his sponsorship of the original bill last month.
Cruz says that the current version of the bill calls for the US to not only send millions of dollars of aid to the Palestinian Authority but completely revamps longstanding US policy regarding its support for Israel in peace negotiations with the PA.
Since 2012, the mandate of Congress is that US policy is to “assist” and “support the Government of Israel” in negotiations with the Palestinians. The Israel Relations Normalization Act eliminates these statements of support for Israel and instead says only that the US supports “a negotiated solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict resulting in two states living side by side in peace, security, and mutual recognition.”
Cruz is planning on introducing an amendment to the bill which replaces the language in question with a statement of the US’s unequivocal and longstanding support for Israel and will block the advancement of the bill until his amendment is considered.
The new statement was not part of the original legislation and was inserted only hours before the bill was slated to be advanced. Cruz’s efforts to eliminate the new language was thwarted by the leadership of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he said at the time.
“Hours before the vote, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee radically changed the bill,” Cruz said in June, when he withdrew his support of the bill. “The added language declared it would be the ‘policy of the United States’ to create a Palestinian state and to pour millions into Palestinian areas despite ongoing Palestinian government salaries for terrorists. I offered amendments to return the bill to its original bipartisan embrace of the Abraham Accords but they were rejected.”
“U.S. diplomats have no business telling our Israeli allies what to do with their territories, let alone pressuring them to cede sovereignty for a Palestinian state,” Cruz asserted.
Jeff Ballabon, a political strategist and author of the Republican Party platform on Israel, told the Free Beacon that the bill as it stands now represents “a reversal of decades of American policy in line with [President Barack] Obama’s most egregious detours into anti-Israel hostility.”
“Not only is Senator Cruz entirely correct, his position is precisely that of the GOP platform’s Israel plank. Any senator with even the slightest genuine concern for peace and security for Arabs or Jews should stand with Cruz.”
(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)
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One Response
the bill as it stands now represents “a reversal of decades of American policy in line with [President Barack] Obama’s most egregious detours into anti-Israel hostility.”
Well, duh. Yes.
Susan Rice is the one pulling Bidens strings.