Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson responded to a new Biden administration policy regarding Israel’s West Bank (Judea and Samaria) by saying “Jewish people have a historic and legal right to live in the land of Israel, including in Judea and Samaria — the biblical heartland.”
The term “West Bank” was created by the British in the 1948 to describe the area west of the Jordan River that was under Jordanian occupation until 1967. When Israel reunified the country in 19 1967 war in which Jordan and five other Arab nations attacked it, they dropped the term in favor of the Biblically accurate terms Samaria and Judea.
At issue is a U.S. State Department policy that considers new Israeli housing and settlements in the West Bank “inconsistent with international law.” The administration said the policy is a return to the pre-Trump policy held for decades by both Democratic and Republican presidents. In 2019, then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that the Trump administration did not consider settlements in the West Bank “inconsistent with international law.”
Johnson, in a post on X, criticized the Biden policy.
“This is a shameful decision,” he wrote. “The Jewish people have a historic and legal right to live in the land of Israel including in Judea and Samaria — the biblical heartland. It is an absolute disgrace the Biden administration would issue this decision, especially as Israel fights terrorists on multiple fronts that seek Israel’s destruction and as more than 130 hostages remain in Gaza. The Biden administration must stop undermining Israel and facilitating efforts to delegitimize Israel. It is misguided and unconscionable.”
The administration is standing by the new policy.
“We are simply reaffirming the fundamental conclusion that these settlements are inconsistent with international law,” national security spokesperson John Kirby said. “That is a position that has been consistent over a range of Republican and Democratic administrations. If there’s an administration that is being inconsistent, it was the previous one.”
David M Friedman, U.S. ambassador to Israel under Trump, said on social media that “(Secretary of State Antony) Blinken is 100 percent wrong. I researched this for over a year with many State Department lawyers. There is nothing illegal about Jews living in their biblical homeland. .For Blinken to announce this in the middle of a war and when the Jewish Sabbath already has begun in Israel is unconscionable.”
–Dwight Widaman | Metro Voice
