Palestinian-Americans unable to budge Biden to raise tone against Israel — report

Palestinian-Americans have been pressuring presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden to change his campaign’s position to be more pro-Palestinian, but without success so far, the Reuters news agency reports.

More than 120 leaders of the Palestinian diaspora in the United States have signed a “Statement of Principles” detailing their demands of candidates, the report says, citing three unnamed people “familiar with the campaign’s thinking.”

The list includes conditioning aid to Israel on it ending “practices that violate Palestinian rights and contravene international law” and clarifying that there will be no recognition of Israeli sovereignty in the West Bank.

“We want to see Biden embrace the party’s progressives, who have recognized the shared struggle between Palestinians living under military occupation, and Black and brown Americans who face police brutality, systemic racism and injustice,” the report quoted Zeina Ashrawi Hutchison, a delegate to the Democratic National Convention in August, as saying.

However, the campaign isn’t gaining traction with Biden’s campaign, the sources were quoted as saying.

“The progressives want a full-throttle platform change — a pro-Palestinian flank, an anti-annexation flank — but there just isn’t appetite in the campaign so far,” one of them says.