The White House\u2019s approach to U.S. allies hitting Israeli settlers with sanctions comes down to this: Say as little as possible and let it happen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
President Donald Trump engaged on the issue Wednesday only to say he was looking into it. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Tuesday that the U.S. didn\u2019t plan to issue its own sanctions, but did not condemn the actions by the U.K. and a number of other countries. He even added that the U.S. shared its allies\u2019 goal of \u201cstability\u201d in the West Bank and preventing further violence there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
An administration official familiar with Israeli policy said such vague statements are indicative of the administration\u2019s strategy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t need to get into every spat between allies. Israel can defend itself and they will,\u201d said the official, who was granted anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomatic efforts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Washington is \u201cstaying out of it,\u201d the official added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s a reflection of the delicate line the Trump administration is walking on Israel right now. The White House is open to some actions that push Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to get in line with Trump\u2019s peace efforts in the region. It\u2019s also wary of making any moves that suggest a break with Israel \u2014 a longtime U.S. partner with which it is waging a war against Iran and which still has significant backing in the Republican Party.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Rubio\u2019s comments on Tuesday, which alluded to the administration\u2019s frustration with Israel\u2019s current government, show the White House staking out that middle ground, said Curt Mills, executive director of the anti-interventionist American Conservative magazine, who speaks regularly with administration officials.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt squares a lot of circles for them,\u201d he said. \u201cIf the relationship with the Brits is reasonably good, and it\u2019s a way to sort of clip Bibi\u2019s wings, I think they\u2019re prepared to do it,\u201d he explained, referring to Netanyahu by his nickname.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The White House and the State Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Washington has watched from the wings as the U.K., France and Canada move forward with sanctions against Israeli settlements, saying they will halt trade with the areas widely considered illegally seized under international law. U.K. officials have stressed that they informed the U.S. of their plans ahead of time and implied that they didn\u2019t get significant pushback.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The White House\u2019s approach to U.S. allies hitting Israeli settlers with sanctions comes down to this: Say as little as possible and let it happen. President Donald Trump engaged on the issue Wednesday only to say he was looking into it. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Tuesday that the U.S. didn\u2019t plan to issue […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35826,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35825","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsreporters.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35825","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsreporters.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsreporters.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsreporters.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsreporters.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=35825"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsreporters.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35825\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35827,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsreporters.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35825\/revisions\/35827"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsreporters.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/35826"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsreporters.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsreporters.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=35825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsreporters.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=35825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}