US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Sunday at a joint briefing with Prime Minister Naftali Bennett that he and the prime minister discussed ways to “prevent actions on all sides that could raise tensions.”
The statement came just a few hours before two Arab terrorists killed two Israeli police officers and critically wounded four more in a shooting attack that took place Sunday evening in Hadera, and 5 days after the terror attack in Be’er Sheva that left 4 Israelis dead and 2 more wounded.
“Israelis and Palestinians deserve to enjoy equal measures of freedom, security, opportunity, and dignity,” Blinken told reporters in Jerusalem, adding that’s “one of the principal reasons we support a negotiated two-state solution.”
The Secretary’s definition of actions to be “prevented” that “raise tensions,” included a list of no no’s mostly for Israel, with two items tossed in for action by the Palestinian Authority, probably to maintain the guise of moral equivalency.
Neither of those two items for the Palestinian Authority, however, was discussed or even mentioned publicly following Blinken’s late-day meeting in Ramallah with Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas. In fact, Blinken issued no statement at all after leaving Ramallah, nor did he address reporters at a joint news conference.
US Action List for Israel
The action list handed to Bennett by Blinken, largely an attack on Israelis living in Judea and Samaria, came while the two men discussed “ways to foster a peaceful Passover, Ramadan and Easter across Israel, Gaza and the West Bank, particularly in Jerusalem,” the Secretary said.
That, he said, “means working to prevent actions on all sides that could raise tensions, including:
- settlement expansion,
- settler violence,
- incitement to violence,
- demolitions,
- payments to individuals convicted of terrorism,
- evictions of families from homes they’ve lived in for decades.
Let’s take the list item by item.