An unpublished draft US statement criticizing plans by Britain, France and Canada to ban settlement imports

In early September, American officials in Jerusalem and Washington prepared a draft statement attributed to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, denouncing plans by Britain, France, and Canada to ban imports coming from Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.

The document suggested that Rubio describe the three countries' plans as a series of hostile measures against Israel that contribute to anti-Semitism. The document was dated September 8, and no reports had been previously published about it. Two sources said that it was prepared at the initiative of David Milstein, an influential aide to the US Ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee.

“These plans are unacceptably drawn from anti-Semitic strategies such as the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement,” the draft document said, according to Reuters. But the statement was never published.

Three informed sources said that the statement did not receive the support of the White House and senior officials in the State Department.

Instead, in his statements on September 8 in Florida before traveling to Latin America, Rubio refrained from directing explicit criticism of the decision or any specific country.

“It is clear that we will not do what the United Kingdom did,” Rubio said. We reviewed their announcement today, but I have no comment on it at the present time.”

This incident reveals the widening gap between the White House and Trump's senior diplomats in Israel regarding the best way to deal with the expansion of Israeli settlements under the right-wing government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

It also highlights a growing ideological division within the American right regarding support for Israel, as opinion polls show that younger Republicans have an increasingly negative opinion of Washington's closest ally in the Middle East.

Earlier this year, President Donald Trump expressed his opposition to expanding settlements, which constitute a source of growing tension with Israel's Arab neighbors, but his administration has exerted little pressure on Israel to change its policy.

This sometimes puts him in contrast to Huckabee, a Baptist minister and staunch supporter of settlements who refers to the West Bank by the biblical name “Judea and Samaria,” a term used by the Israeli government but not officially adopted by the United States.

Milstein, Huckabee's aide, called last year for the United States to impose sanctions on the entire ICC to force it to drop war crimes charges against Israeli leaders over the Gaza war, a measure the Trump administration has not yet taken.

* Doubts about American popular support for Israel

American public support for Israel has declined since the outbreak of the Gaza War in 2023, especially among Democrats. A June Quinnipiac University poll showed that 48 percent of voters and 66 percent of Democrats believe the United States is too supportive of Israel, up from 16 percent and 20 percent when the question was first asked in 2017.

While a large majority of Republicans aged 50 or older view Israel favorably, criticism of younger conservative Americans has increased, according to the results of a poll conducted by the Pew Research Center in late March. About 57 percent of Republicans between the ages of 18 and 49 expressed a negative opinion of Israel, an increase from the 50 percent recorded in the previous year.

In December last year, Trump said following a meeting with Netanyahu that he was not in complete agreement with the Israeli Prime Minister, whose government oversaw a rapid expansion of settlements, regarding the West Bank. In September of that year, Trump said he would not allow Israel to annex the West Bank.

Israel has occupied the West Bank since the 1967 war. The United Nations and most countries consider the settlements illegal according to international law. Israel rejects this, and considers these lands to be disputed and not occupied.

The pace of violence committed by Jewish settlers against Palestinians in the West Bank has increased sharply this year, and some of them have gained courage because of the support they receive from Netanyahu's right-wing government, which includes settler ministers.

Huckabee publicly denounced the acts of violence and called for the prosecution of their perpetrators. He also said that violent settlers represent a minority and do not represent settlers as a whole.

About 500,000 Israeli settlers and three million Palestinians live in the West Bank. The Palestinians have long sought to establish their future state on the West Bank, along with Gaza and East Jerusalem.