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Trump Advisers Talk of Palestinian Expulsions, but Activists Focus on Biden - By Jonathan Weisman, New York Times

 

 

Donald J. Trump’s son-in-law and his former ambassador to Israel have amplified policy proposals embraced by Israel’s far-right wing, but U.S. activists say their anger still rests with the current administration.

Even as Palestinian-rights organizers focus their ire on President Biden, the advisers who shaped Donald J. Trump’s Middle East policies when he was president have amplified calls for the expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza and the annexation of the West Bank by Israel.

Those policy prescriptions, voiced by Mr. Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and his former ambassador to Israel, David M. Friedman, suggest a right-wing approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict exceeding even the Trump administration’s lopsidedly pro-Israeli proposals for a two-state solution. Mr. Trump was contradictory on the policies he would pursue in an interview with a conservative Israeli publication. But he did say he would be meeting with Mr. Friedman to discuss the former ambassador’s plan for Israeli annexation of the West Bank.

Yet rather than raising alarm bells, some Palestinian organizers still maintain that Mr. Biden is the true threat, and that rhetoric from his Republican challenger cannot compare to policies that they say have already led to the killing of tens of thousands of Palestinians.

“The fear of a second Trump term no longer resonates,” said Abed Ayoub, the national executive director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, who has been organizing Arab American and progressive voters in Michigan.

Mr. Ayoub suggested that if Mr. Trump was re-elected because activists shun Mr. Biden, the Democratic Party could be forced to reconsider its position on Israel.

The ideas given voice by Mr. Friedman and Mr. Kushner have raised eyebrows. At a forum at Harvard that first drew widespread attention last week, Mr. Kushner, a developer who has actively pursued real estate deals abroad off contacts made when he was setting policy in the White House, said that “Gaza’s waterfront property could be very valuable.” He also suggested Palestinians be “moved out” of the beleaguered territory.

The ideas given voice by Mr. Friedman and Mr. Kushner have raised eyebrows. At a forum at Harvard that first drew widespread attention last week, Mr. Kushner, a developer who has actively pursued real estate deals abroad off contacts made when he was setting policy in the White House, said that “Gaza’s waterfront property could be very valuable.” He also suggested Palestinians be “moved out” of the beleaguered territory.

But none of that has proved persuasive as Israel pursues its military campaign to destroy Hamas, the perpetrator of the killing of around 1,200 Israelis on Oct. 7.

Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden are “not the only two choices,” Mr. Ayoub said, “and it doesn’t fall upon Palestinian-rights activists and peace activists to take one of those two choices. If the byproduct of our choice is another Trump administration, then Democrats need to look at what they did for the next election.”

 

 

 

 

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