The most politically significant portion of Van Hollen’s essay may be his warning to future Democratic presidential candidates.

By Corey Walker, The Algemeiner

For decades, support for Israel was one of the few enduring bipartisan constants in Washington.

But a new essay by Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) suggests that consensus is fracturing, with some Democrats increasingly viewing distance from the Jewish state not as a political liability but as a requirement for the party’s future.

In a lengthy opinion essay published Tuesday in The New York Times, Van Hollen issued one of his most sweeping criticisms of Israel to date, calling for the next Democratic president to condition military aid to the Jewish state and recognize a Palestinian state even absent a negotiated peace agreement.

The Maryland Democrat accused Israel of maintaining what he described as “apartheid” conditions, enabling “ethnic cleansing” in Judea and Samaria, and carrying out military actions in Gaza he considers a “genocide.”

Van Hollen, who has become one of the party’s most outspoken critics of Israel since the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023 massacre, argued that Democrats must fundamentally rethink the US-Israel relationship.

“The next Democratic president should recognize a State of Palestine that is subject to clear benchmarks, including free and fair elections,” Van Hollen wrote.

“Unless and until a different agreement is reached, the United States should treat Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, as part of Palestine — a policy some of our European and Asian partners have already begun to carry out.”

The essay reflects a growing rift between Israel and the Democratic Party nearly two years after Hamas-led terrorists invaded southern Israel, murdered some 1,200 people, and kidnapped more than 250 others.

The war in Gaza has accelerated a sharp ideological divide among Democrats, with progressive lawmakers and younger voters increasingly demanding a tougher posture toward Israel.

Van Hollen framed his proposal as a moral and strategic correction.

But critics argued that his essay placed disproportionate blame on Israel while minimizing the realities that Israeli leaders say drove the war: Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre, the continued captivity of hostages, years of rocket fire, and the terrorist group’s use of civilian areas in Gaza for military operations.

The essay quickly drew backlash from Israel supporters, who warned that Van Hollen’s rhetoric risks legitimizing some of the Jewish state’s harshest international critics at a time when antisemitism is surging globally.

Others argued that unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state would reward Hamas for the Oct. 7 atrocities and strengthen the group’s standing across the Islamist world.

Van Hollen condemned Hamas and acknowledged Israel’s right to security, but critics noted that the bulk of the essay focused on Israeli conduct while devoting comparatively little attention to Hamas’ strategy of embedding fighters, weapons, and tunnel networks in densely populated civilian areas.

Israeli officials have repeatedly said the country’s military campaign in Gaza is aimed at dismantling Hamas and preventing the terrorist group from carrying out another Oct. 7-style attack.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected accusations of genocide and apartheid as politically motivated smears designed to delegitimize Israel’s right to exist.

The most politically significant portion of Van Hollen’s essay may be his warning to future Democratic presidential candidates.

The senator argued that Democratic primary voters would no longer trust candidates who supported military aid to Netanyahu’s government during the Gaza war or aligned themselves with senior Biden administration officials involved in Middle East policy.

That warning highlights how rapidly Israel has evolved from a foreign policy dispute into a battle over the future identity of the Democratic Party.

Progressive lawmakers and left-wing challengers have increasingly used terms such as “genocide,” “ethnic cleansing,” and “apartheid” to describe Israel’s military campaign, pressuring party leaders to move away from traditional support for the US-Israel alliance.

Some foreign policy veterans argue that conditioning military aid to Israel could weaken one of America’s closest Middle Eastern allies while emboldening Iran and its regional proxies, including Hamas and Hezbollah.

Others warn that recognizing a Palestinian state outside a negotiated settlement could remove incentives for Palestinian leaders to compromise and further entrench the conflict.

Critics also challenged Van Hollen’s claim that Democrats have offered Israel “reflexive and unconditional support.”

The Biden administration repeatedly criticized Netanyahu’s government, sanctioned extremist Israeli settlers, pressed Israel to increase humanitarian aid into Gaza, and clashed with Israeli officials over military operations, even as it continued to provide weapons and diplomatic backing.

In the aftermath of Oct. 7, Van Hollen has grown increasingly adversarial toward Israel.

He has backed resolutions seeking to block arms transfers to the Jewish state, accused Israel of creating a humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, and called on fellow Democrats to speak out more forcefully against Netanyahu’s government.

Whether Van Hollen’s essay marks a temporary backlash to the devastation in Gaza or a lasting realignment inside the Democratic Party could help determine the future of both Democratic politics and the US-Israel relationship.

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Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) said its release “is vital to ensuring transparency and accountability” in the death of Shireen Abu Akleh.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

U.S. Senator Chris Van Hollen called Monday for the White House to release an official American report on the accidental killing of a reporter last year during a firefight between the IDF and Palestinian terrorists in Jenin.

The administration should “immediately declassify” last month’s summation report of the U.S. Security Coordinator for Israel and the Palestinian Authority (USSC) on the May 2022 death of Shireen Abu Akleh, a Palestinian journalist with American citizenship, “in its entirety,” the Maryland Democrat said.

“I strongly believe that its public release is vital to ensuring transparency and accountability … and to avoiding future preventable and wrongful deaths – goals we should all support,” he added.

Van Hollen criticized Israel’s refusal to let the USSC team interview “key witnesses,” seemingly referring to the IDF soldiers who were involved in the clash. Saying that the report provides “very important insights” about how this IDF unit and others “operate in the West Bank,” he also noted that Israel had rejected Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s call for the IDF to rethink its rules of engagement in the region.

“Such a review remains necessary,” he said.

For over a year, since the beginning of a serious uptick in terror attacks, IDF forces have been going on almost-nightly raids in Judea and Samaria to arrest suspects and confiscate illegal weapons. Just last week, 32-year-old Meir Tamari was murdered in a drive-by shooting in an attack for which the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, affiliated with Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah faction, took credit.

Jenin is a hotbed of terrorism, and the IDF force came under attack when it entered the city looking for wanted men last May. The PA and Al Jazeera, Abu Akleh’s employer, claimed no Palestinians were shooting in the area where the journalist had been standing, clearly marked as a member of the press – a claim that the IDF contested.

The internal Israeli investigation into her death, which American officials were allowed to observe, concluded that the badly mangled bullet that hit Abu Akleh could not be proven to have come from an Israeli weapon, although “likely.” The Israeli government apologized last month for her death.

Van Hollen is a qualified Israel supporter. Although the 64-year-old legislator has gone on record backing Israel’s right to defend itself against terrorism, he consistently calls for applying the “two-state solution” to the Palestinian-Israel conflict and is strongly supported by the left-wing J-Street advocacy group.

While saying that he opposes the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement that targets Israel, he does not support anti-BDS legislation, citing First Amendment concerns.

In March, Van Hollen criticized Israel when the government voted to roll back the Disengagement Law to enable Jews to return to the four settlements in northern Samaria that had been destroyed in the 2005 disengagement.

Last month, he led 15 colleagues in a letter to Blinken stating that Israel should be allowed to join the Visa Waiver Program only if all U.S. citizens are allowed free travel to Israel, “regardless of national origin, religion, or ethnicity.” He cited problems that American Palestinians or Muslim tourists have had at Israel’s borders, which have generally stemmed from Israel’s security concerns.

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Meeting with a senior Palestinian official, Senators Lindsey Graham and Chris Van Hollen voiced support for the establishment of a Palestinian state. 

By World Israel News Staff

Republican Lindsey Graham and Democrat Chris Van Hollen met with senior Palestinian official Saeb Erekat, a longtime Palestinian Authority (PA) negotiator, during a visit by the two senior senators to Israel this week, according to reports.

Erekat used the bipartisan composition of the senatorial delegation to circumvent what the PA says has been a boycott of diplomatic contacts with the U.S. government since President Donald Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, according to one source.

At the center of the conversation, apparently, was the U.S. law that bars American aid to the PA as long as it continues to provide monthly stipends to terrorists and their families. Israel has also imposed financial sanctions, bolstered by Knesset legislation, against the Palestinians over the terror payments.

The meeting with Erekat took place on Tuesday, according to Axios, one day after Graham and Van Hollen met with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Van Hollen has spoken out against Washington’s halt to financial aid for programs for Palestinians run by the USAID agency.

For his part, Graham stressed his support for the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel in what is referred to as a two-state solution, even though President Donald Trump and his son-in-law, senior adviser Jared Kushner, have at various times raised questions over whether a two-state solution is part of the still-awaited U.S. political plan for Israelis and Palestinians.

“Graham and Van Hollen arrived in Israel as part of their work on a draft Senate resolution that will support a two-state solution,” says Axios. The Israeli Embassy in Washington has been lobbying both senators to drop the term “two-state solution” from the text, but they have refused, says the news outlet.

“I want everybody to understand there is no one-state solution. I will not invest a dime in a situation that results in one state. It is a bad deal for America. If you believe in a democratic Jewish state, it is lost over time from the demographics of merging the two peoples,” Graham said at a news conference with Van Hollen in Jerusalem on Tuesday.

“We think it is important to send a signal to the Palestinians who want to live in peace with Israel that there is a road to getting there. We want to keep alive the possibility for the two-state solution,” said Van Hollen.

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