JERUSALEM: In early September, US officials in \u200cJerusalem and Washington prepared a draft statement attributed to Secretary of State Marco Rubio condemning plans by the UK, France and Canada to block imports from Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.<\/p>\n
The September 8 dated document, previously unreported and which two sources said was driven by David Milstein, an influential aide to US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, proposed that Rubio describe the countries\u2019 actions as a series of hostile measures against Israel that contribute to antisemitism.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese tactics unacceptably draw from the playbook of the antisemitic boycotts, divestments and sanctions movement,\u201d the draft document, reviewed by Reuters, said.<\/p>\n
The statement was never released.<\/p>\n
According to three people familiar with the matter, the statement was not supported by the White House and the State Department\u2019s senior leadership.<\/p>\n
The people spoke on condition of anonymity.<\/p>\n
Instead, speaking to reporters on September 8 in Florida before traveling to Latin America, Rubio refrained from outright criticism of the decision or any particular country. \u201cObviously, we\u2019re not going to do what the UK did. We saw their announcement today, but I \u200cdon\u2019t have any \u200ccomment on it right now,\u201d Rubio said.<\/p>\n
The episode illustrates a widening divide between the White House \u200cand Trump\u2019s senior diplomats in Israel about how best to respond to the expansion of Israeli settlements under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s right-wing government. It also highlights a growing ideological split within the American right over support for Israel, with polling showing younger Republicans holding an increasingly unfavorable opinion of Washington\u2019s closest Middle East ally.<\/p>\n
President Donald Trump earlier this year expressed his opposition to settlement expansion, a growing source of friction with Israel\u2019s Arab neighbors, but his administration has put little pressure on Israel to change its policy.<\/p>\n
That has at times put him at odds with Huckabee, a Baptist minister who is a staunch supporter of settlements and who refers to the West Bank by its biblical name, Judea and Samaria, a term used by the Israeli government but \u200cnot formally adopted by the US.<\/p>\n
Huckabee\u2019s aide Milstein last year advocated that the \u200cUS impose sanctions on the entire International Criminal Court to convince it to drop war crimes charges against Israeli leaders over the Gaza \u200cwar – a measure the Trump administration has yet to deploy.<\/p>\n
In response to questions from Reuters, a senior US official said \u200cthe draft statement was not prepared in consultation with the State Department or White House.<\/p>\n
The US embassy referred questions, including requests for comment from Huckabee and Milstein, to the State Department. The White House did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
JERUSALEM: In early September, US officials in \u200cJerusalem and Washington prepared a draft statement attributed to Secretary of State Marco Rubio condemning plans by the UK, France and Canada to block imports from Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. The September 8 dated document, previously unreported and which two sources said was driven by …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":103423,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-103409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103409","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103409"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103409\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":103424,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103409\/revisions\/103424"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/103423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}