WASHINGTON (Dispatches) – A group of progressive Democrats in the United States Congress has called on U.S. President Joe Biden to “shift” American policy on the Palestinian-Zionist conflict, saying that U.S. aid should not be used to fund abuses of Palestinian rights.
In a letter to Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken, 14 lawmakers also urged the U.S. administration to investigate whether American weapons were used to commit rights violations against Palestinians and ensure that “U.S. taxpayer funds do not support projects in illegal settlements”.
“Furthermore, we call on your administration to ensure that all future foreign assistance to Israel, including weapons and equipment, is not used in support of gross violations of human rights, including by strengthening end-use monitoring and financial tracking,” it read.
U.S. regulations, including a provision known as the Leahy law, prohibit assistance to military forces that commit gross violations of human rights.
The lawmakers, headed by Representative Jamaal Bowman and Senator Bernie Sanders, urged the White House “to undertake a shift in U.S. policy in recognition of the worsening violence, further annexation of land, and denial of Palestinian rights.”
The letter also said hardline officials in Zionist prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet were involved in “pushing repressive, anti-democratic policies and escalating violence towards the Palestinian population.”
The lawmakers said the regime has continued to authorize settlement-building despite U.S. objections. “We are deeply concerned by Israeli…moves that demonstrate that illegal de facto and de jure annexation of the occupied West Bank is well underway.”
The letter marked a rare call from Congress for curbing the $3.8 billion the occupying regime receives in U.S. military assistance every year.
Tel Aviv has stepped up settlement expansion since late December, when Netanyahu staged a comeback as prime minister at the head of a cabinet of hard-right and ultra-Orthodox parties.
More than 600,000 Zionists live in over 230 settlements built since the 1967 occupation of the West Bank and East Al-Quds.
The international community views the settlements – hundreds of which have been built across the West Bank since Tel Aviv’s occupation of the territory in 1967 – as illegal under international law and the Geneva Conventions due to their construction on the occupied territories.
The UN Security Council has condemned the occupying regime’s settlement activities in the occupied territories in several resolutions. The Palestinians have historically demanded that the West Bank serve as part of their future state with East Al-Quds, which is located inside the territory, as its capital.