United States Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Barbara Leaf on Wednesday reaffirmed President Joe Biden’s support for the two-state solution despite rising Palestinian violence in Judea and Samaria.
Leaf, speaking at a press conference regarding her recent trip to the Middle East and North Africa, stressed the administration’s commitment to the creation of a Palestinian state side-by-side with Israel “so that Israelis and Palestinians can live safely and securely and enjoy equal measures of freedom, security and prosperity.”
“So Esau hated Jacob because of the blessing with which his father blessed him, and Esau said in his heart, “The days of mourning for my father [a]are at hand; then I will kill my brother Jacob.” Genesis 27:41
The “two-state solution” calls for creating an unprecedented militarized Palestinian state inside the borders of Israel, ethnically cleansed of Jews, and with its capital in an exclusively Muslim Jerusalem.
She added that Washington is encouraging security cooperation between the two sides “to the greatest degree possible.”
The administration is focused on bettering economic conditions in the Palestinian-controlled territories, Leaf noted, saying this “can help and sustain improvement in security conditions.”
She listed a number of administration projects designed to boost “economic growth and greater opportunities for Palestinians,” including $100 million promised by Biden during his visit in July to an eastern Jerusalem hospital network, the extension of 4G cellular service to Judea and Samaria and the Gaza Strip, and expanding operational hours and capacity at the Allenby Bridge crossing between Jordan and Israel.
The belief that there was a causal relationship between poverty and terrorism has been disproven by countless studies, most notably one written by Avraham Jager for the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism and the IDC Herzeliya which conclude “that the great majority of both theoretical and empirical research on the association between poverty and terrorism leads to the inevitable conclusion that poverty is not, as it is often perceived to be, a cause of terrorism.”
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