Most House Democrats Slam Israeli-Palestinian Plans That Don’t Include 2 States
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
By Ron Kampeas June 12, 2019
WASHINGTON (JTA) — More than half of the Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives say a peace plan that does not expressly have as its outcome two states would endanger the prospects of peace.
The resolution, a dig at the Trump administration’s peace policies, was backed by J Street, the liberal Middle East policy group. It says not mentioning two states in a deal would “put a peaceful end to the conflict further out of reach.”
The non-binding resolution, which so far has garnered 123 co-sponsors out of 235 in the Democratic caucus, alludes to the as-yet- unveiled peace plan drafted by President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner. Kushner has not counted out Palestinian statehood as an outcome, but he also says that the phrase is not a useful one.
The resolution, introduced last month by Rep. Alan Lowenthal, D-Calif., who is Jewish, calls for “a two-state solution that is consistent with the broadly held consensus positions for resolving the conflict’s final status issues as reflected in previous United States proposals.”
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