US prefers two-state talks to unilateral declarations of Palestinian state - White House
Joanna Walters
The US is sticking to its policy of favoring talks leading to a two-state solution in the Middle East that guarantees the status of Israel and “security for the Palestinian people” – not declaring recognition for Palestine as three European countries did earlier today.
At the White House press briefing that’s underway, with press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and national security advisor Jake Sullivan, in Washington, Sullivan was asked about Ireland, Spain and Norway announcing they will formally recognize a Palestinian state on 28 May.
“We believe in a two-state solution that should be brought about by direct talks between parties, not unilateral declarations,” Sullivan said.
He added moments later: “We believe the only way we are going to achieve a two-state solution is through direct negotiations.”
Sullivan did not say the word Palestine at any point.
Yoav Gallant and Jake Sullivan during a meeting at the Ministry of Defense headquarters in Tel Aviv, Israel on 20 May 2024. Photograph: Ariel Hermoni/ISRAEL’S MINISTRY OF DEFENSE HANDOUT/EPA
He also said, when asked about Israel’s growing diplomatic isolation in relation to its military offensive in Gaza, that “we certainly have seen a growing chorus of voices that had previously been in support of Israel drifting in another direction. That concerns us.”
Sullivan added that it only boosted the US desire to see greater “regional integration”, with a two state solution for Israelis and Palestinians and Israel “being integrated with the modern Arab states,” which he had been discussing most recently with Saudi Arabia.
Democrats are planning an offensive against the GOP over access to contraception, and have seized on a vote by Louisiana’s Republican state lawmakers to tighten access to abortion medication and argue that Donald Trump, the party’s presumptive presidential nominee, will undermine reproductive rights, if elected. The party is also mulling a response to last week’s report that conservative supreme court justice Samuel Alito once flew a flag associated with Trump’s lies about the 2020 election, though top Senate Republican Mitch McConnelldefended the court. The nine justices are still considering cases concerning Trump’s immunity on charges related to meddling in the 2020 election, and on abortion access. The court announces more decisions tomorrow, and those issues could be among them.
Here’s what else happened today:
Jake Sullivan, the US national security adviser, reiterated that the United States supports a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine crisis after three European allies unilaterally recognized a Palestinian state.
A Guardian poll conducted by Harris found a majority of voters think the economy is in worse shape than it actually is, and are blaming Joe Biden.
Rudy Giulianireportedly agreed to stop attacking two Georgia election workers who last year won a major defamation judgment against him.
Republican House speaker Mike Johnsonwants to “punish” the international criminal court for its chief prosecutor’s request for arrest warrants against Israeli leaders.
Hunter Biden’s laptop will soon get its day in court.
Republican House speaker Mike Johnson wants to invite Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to make a joint address to Congress, but is waiting to hear from the Senate’s Democratic leader Chuck Schumer before sending the invitation, ABC News reports.
If he does not hear from Schumer, Johnson said: “We were going to proceed and invite Netanyahu just to the House.”
Schumer is publicly open to the idea, saying: “I’m discussing that now with the speaker of the House, and as I’ve always said, our relationship with Israel is ironclad and transcends any one prime minister or president.”
Netanyahu last addressed Congress in 2015. A meeting between Schumer and Netanyahu could be a little awkward, since the Senate leader recently called him “an obstacle to peace” in Gaza and said Israel should hold new elections:
Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop will get its day in court, literally.
CNN reports that David Weiss, the special counsel who is pursuing charges against the president’s son related to his allegedly lying about his drug use when buying a firearm, will introduce the laptop’s contents in court when the trial begins on 3 June.
“The defendant’s laptop is real (it will be introduced as a trial exhibit) and it contains significant evidence of the defendant’s guilt,” prosecutors wrote today in a filing, according to CNN.
Here’s more:
Weiss plans to use the laptop to back up his narrow claim that Biden was addicted to illegal drugs when he bought a gun in 2018, allegedly in violation of federal law. Weiss has not addressed the unproven allegation from Republicans that emails on the laptop prove that Biden and his father were involved in corrupt foreign deals.
Biden has pleaded not guilty to three gun crimes. The trial is set to begin June 3 at the federal court in Delaware.
In their own court filings earlier this week, Hunter Biden’s lawyers said they want to contest the authenticity of the materials from the laptop if Weiss brings it up at trial.
‘Defense counsel has numerous reasons to believe the data had been altered and compromised before investigators obtained the electronic material,’ his lawyers wrote.
Biden dropped off the laptop at a Delaware repair shop in April 2019. His lawyers said in the filing that the shop owner admitted in his memoir that he ‘began accessing sensitive, private material in the data’ right away, and continued to potentially tamper with the data throughout the five months before the FBI seized the device.
Prosecutors counter by saying that some of the people who exchanged these messages with Biden will testify and assert that the messages are real. They also say the laptop materials are only a fraction of the digital evidence they have collected against Biden, including messages subpoenaed directly from Apple.
‘He has not shown any of the actual evidence in this case is unreliable or inauthentic, because there is none,’ Weiss’ team wrote in a Wednesday filing. ‘Instead, the defendant’s theory about the laptop is a conspiracy theory with no supporting evidence.’
While Biden has written publicly of his struggles with addiction, his defense attorney recently accused federal prosecutors of not getting their evidence quite right:
While some of its allies are moving to unilaterally recognize a Palestinian state, Washington DC is worried that Benajmin Netanyahu may undermine a deal to normalize relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, the Guardian’s Bethan McKernan reports:
The US is worried that Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, may be willing to torpedo a potential normalisation deal with Saudi Arabia if it entails ending the war in Gaza and committing to working towards a two-state solution to the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, told the Senate’s foreign relations committee on Tuesday: “We have sought to move forward in negotiating the bilateral aspects, but even if we were to conclude those agreements – and I believe we could, relatively quickly – it could not go forward absent other things that need to happen for normalisation to proceed.
“There’s an opportunity for Israel to become integrated in the region, to get the fundamental security it needs and wants, to have the relationships it’s wanted since its founding. The Saudis have been clear that this would require calm in Gaza and a credible pathway to a Palestinian state,” he said, adding: “It may well be at this moment, Israel is not able or willing to proceed down this pathway.”
The Biden administration has been working for some time on a plan in which Riyadh would normalise relations with Israel in return for a formal defence pact with the US and assistance in developing a civilian nuclear programme.
While the international criminal court has attracted opprobrium from both sides of the aisle for chief prosecutor Karim Khan’s request for arrest warrants against top Israeli officials, it does have some defenders in Washington.
Independent senator Bernie Sanders delivered an address on the Senate floor yesterday arguing that Khan’s investigation was in the interest of justice, and argued that the United States cannot object to the conduct of authoritarian rivals such as Russia and China if it does not hold Israel – a top ally – to the same standard:
What the ICC is doing is important for the world. It’s [a message] to leaders all over the world – dictators, people in democratic countries – that if you go to war you cannot wage all-out war against civilians. That’s what the ICC is doing, that’s important. But it is also important, Mr. President, for those of us in the United States. Our nation claims to be the leader of the free world, and at our best we try to mobilize countries to uphold international law and prevent crimes against humanity. That is what we try to do and have done.
You can see Sanders’s full speech here:
LIVE: Even democratically-elected officials can commit war crimes. We cannot apply international law only when it’s convenient. https://t.co/0arq3ensqH
Israeli leaders updated the White House national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, on its intentions to minimize civilian harm in the southern Gaza city of Rafah when he visited the region last weekend, he said at the White House media briefing a little earlier.
We now have to see what unfolds from here. What we’re going to be looking at is whether there is a lot of death and destruction from this operation or if it is more precise and proportional,” he said, Reuters reports.
Sullivan said Israeli operations to date in the area have been targeted and limited. He also said aid is flowing from a pier in Gaza to the Palestinians there, and that it was wrong for Israel to withhold funds from the Palestinian authority in the West Bank.
Displaced Palestinians, who fled their home due to Israeli strikes, shelter at a tent camp in the Al-Mawasi area in Rafah, in Gaza on 22 May 2024. Photograph: Hatem Khaled/Reuters
Joe Biden plans to visit Africa as president, national security adviser Jake Sullivan said.
The president would look forward to visiting Africa. He intends to do so as president of the United States,” Sullivan told reporters at the White House briefing, Reuters reports.
Sullivan said he had no formal announcement to make of a Africa visit by Biden.
Adding from the Guardian: there has been chat about Biden “breaking his promise”, made early in his administration, to visit the continent while president, with assumptions that there would be no time for such a visit prior to the presidential election in November and, obviously, no guarantee that he will win a second term in the White House.
The Associated Press continues, with reporting that Biden is welcoming the president of Kenya, William Ruto, to the White House later today to kick off a three-day state visit.
Ruto comes to Washington as his country is preparing to deploy 1,000 police officers to Haiti to take part in a United Nations-led security effort in the Caribbean nation.
The White House press briefing has just ended.
National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan speaks during a press briefing at the White House in Washington, DC, this afternoon. Photograph: Yuri Gripas/EPA
National security advisor Jake Sullivan just said he was surprised by the announcement of UK prime minister Rishi Sunak that Britain will hold its general election on July 4.
There were no jokes about loss of empire or anything like that, the annual Fourth of July holiday marking independence day, where the US celebrates declaring independence from Great Britain in 1776 after the American revolution, throwing off British rule.
“I was surprised to see it today,” Sullivan said, adding: “But I do not have any real comment on it. We have a very strong, maybe that’s an understatement, alliance with the UK, regardless of elections and prime ministers. We wish them well.”
Sullivan said it would not affect the 50th G7 summit, due to be held in Italy June 13 to 15, which Sunak is expected to attend.
Singing in the rain, whistling in the dark: British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak delivers a speech calling for a general election, outside Number 10 Downing Street, in London, earlier today. Photograph: Maja Smiejkowska/Reuters
Sullivan said the summit would be about strategy, not politics.
Stormy skies: the statue of Winston Churchill faces Big Ben in a rainy London on Wednesday afternoon, with the Houses of Parliament to the right of picture. Photograph: Isabel Infantes/Reuters
US prefers two-state talks to unilateral declarations of Palestinian state - White House
Joanna Walters
The US is sticking to its policy of favoring talks leading to a two-state solution in the Middle East that guarantees the status of Israel and “security for the Palestinian people” – not declaring recognition for Palestine as three European countries did earlier today.
At the White House press briefing that’s underway, with press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and national security advisor Jake Sullivan, in Washington, Sullivan was asked about Ireland, Spain and Norway announcing they will formally recognize a Palestinian state on 28 May.
“We believe in a two-state solution that should be brought about by direct talks between parties, not unilateral declarations,” Sullivan said.
He added moments later: “We believe the only way we are going to achieve a two-state solution is through direct negotiations.”
Sullivan did not say the word Palestine at any point.
Yoav Gallant and Jake Sullivan during a meeting at the Ministry of Defense headquarters in Tel Aviv, Israel on 20 May 2024. Photograph: Ariel Hermoni/ISRAEL’S MINISTRY OF DEFENSE HANDOUT/EPA
He also said, when asked about Israel’s growing diplomatic isolation in relation to its military offensive in Gaza, that “we certainly have seen a growing chorus of voices that had previously been in support of Israel drifting in another direction. That concerns us.”
Sullivan added that it only boosted the US desire to see greater “regional integration”, with a two state solution for Israelis and Palestinians and Israel “being integrated with the modern Arab states,” which he had been discussing most recently with Saudi Arabia.
Democrats are planning an offensive against the GOP over access to contraception, and have seized on a vote by Louisiana’s Republican state lawmakers to tighten access to abortion medication and argue that Donald Trump, the party’s presumptive presidential nominee, will undermine reproductive rights, if elected. The party is also mulling a response to last week’s report that conservative supreme court justice Samuel Alito once flew a flag associated with Trump’s lies about the 2020 election, though top Senate Republican Mitch McConnelldefended the court. The nine justices are still considering cases concerning Trump’s immunity on charges related to meddling in the 2020 election, and on abortion access. The court announces more decisions tomorrow, and those issues could be among them.
Here’s what else is going on today:
A Guardian poll conducted by Harris found a majority of voters think the economy is in worse shape than it actually is, and are blaming Joe Biden.
Rudy Giulianireportedly agreed to stop attacking two Georgia election workers who last year won a major defamation judgment against him.
Republican House speaker Mike Johnsonwants to “punish” the international criminal court for its chief prosecutor’s request for arrest warrants against Israeli leaders.
Mike Johnson, the Republican House speaker, says the United States should “punish” the international criminal court and its chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, who earlier this week requested arrest warrants for top Israeli and Hamas leaders:
Mike Johnson says US should 'punish' ICC for requesting Israel arrest warrants – video
Neither the US nor Israel are parties to the Rome Statute that governs the court, and Joe Biden has objected to Khan’s applications for warrants against Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the defense minister, Yoav Gallant.
Meanwhile, in Gaza, the humanitarian situation is on the verge of collapse despite the installation of a US-funded floating pier on its shoreline:
Economic concerns loom large in the minds of voters nationwide, including in Georgia, a state Joe Biden won in 2020, the first Democrat to do so in decades, But polls have shown the president’s support slipping in the state, and as the Guardian’s Michael Sainato reports from rural Peach county, concerns over the availability of jobs and the affordability of essentials are one reason why:
Rows of pecan and peach trees frame the scenery throughout Peach county, Georgia, a rural area of central Georgia, about 100 miles south of Atlanta. A field of yellow school buses pack a lot on the way into Fort Valley, the county’s seat, where the buses used across the US are manufactured.
Peach county is a swing county in what has emerged as one of the most important swing states in the presidential election. And, according to a March 2024 poll conducted by Emerson College, the economy is the most important issue to Georgia voters. About 32% of those polled said the economy was their top priority, trailed by immigration at 14% and healthcare at 12%.
In 2020, Joe Biden won the state of Georgia by 0.2 percentage points. Donald Trump won Peach county by just over 500 votes, 51.8% to 47.2%. Emerson’s last poll found 46% of voters in Georgia currently support Trump to 42% supporting Biden, with 12% undecided – setting the state, and Peach county, on course for another nail-biting election where views on the economy will be key.
For Victoria Simmons, a retired local newspaper editor who lives in Byron, the economy is a top issue. “People can hardly afford to buy groceries and are losing hope,” she said. “We need to be focusing more on our own country rather than sending millions to places like Ukraine.
“If the election is fair and there is no tampering, I believe we will see a Trump victory,” she said.
Guardian poll draws worrying conclusion for Democrats about voters' perception of the economy
Democrats are having increasing trouble convincing voters that the US economy is in a healthy state, a new Harris poll conducted for the Guardian found.
Despite months of strong job growth, declines in the rate of inflation and record highs in stock indices, the survey indicated that a majority of Americans wrongly believe the country is in a recession. More worryingly for Joe Biden’s re-election prospects, nearly 60% blame “mismanagement” from his administration for making the situation worse. Those findings line up with other polls that have shown voters giving the president poor marks for his handling of the economy.
The Guardian’s Lauren Aratani has a full breakdown of the survey’s findings:
