A gaggle of progressive lawmakers within the US House is reportedly planning to ask President Joe Biden to hunt the resignation of White House Middle East adviser Brett McGurk, a lesser-known official who has exerted vital affect over the administration’s dealing with of Israel’s assault on the Gaza Strip.
HuffPost‘s Akbar Shahid Ahmed, who has detailed McGurk’s outsized function in shaping Biden’s Gaza coverage, reported Thursday that progressive House Democrats have drafted a letter to the president requesting that he ask McGurk to step down.
According to Ahmed, supporters of the hassle plan to “flow into the letter broadly subsequent week and lift the proposal on the subsequent assembly of the highly effective Congressional Progressive Caucus, which has greater than 100 members.”
“Frustration ‘has reached a boiling level’ amongst Democrats who see McGurk as answerable for dangerous insurance policies that undermine Biden’s help,” Ahmed wrote Thursday, citing an unnamed Democratic lawmaker. “Skeptics say that he wrongly centered Biden’s Middle East coverage on deepening US ties to Saudi Arabia — a dangerous proposition given its file of rights abuses that implicate the US”
Sarah Leah Whitson, government director of Democracy for the Arab World Now, mentioned the push for McGurk’s resignation is “a superb thought.”
“Not as a result of Brett McGurk is prickly and never open to listening to views that problem his personal,” Whitson added, “however as a result of the outcomes of his autocratic, deaf management have been a whole failure within the Middle East, on ethical, authorized, and strategic grounds.”
House Dems are making ready a letter looking for the resignation of Brett McGurk, Biden’s Saudi-focused Middle East advisor. Many inside gov + natsec specialists see his insurance policies as fueling the Gaza disaster. Click via for particulars on a struggle that’ll warmth up subsequent week: https://t.co/9BNVXRiFgT
— Akbar Shahid Ahmed (@AkbarSAhmed) January 19, 2024
Last week, Ahmed reported that McGurk — who helped craft disastrous Bush administration insurance policies in Iraq — “has been pitching nationwide safety officers on a plan suggesting an roughly 90-day timeline for what ought to occur as soon as lively combating in Gaza ends.”
“It argues that stability will be achieved within the devastated Palestinian area if American, Israeli, Palestinian, and Saudi officers launch an pressing diplomatic effort that prioritizes the institution of Israel-Saudi ties,” Ahmed wrote, citing unnamed US officers. “Such a improvement is broadly known as ‘normalization,’ given Saudi Arabia’s refusal to acknowledge Israel since its founding in 1948.”
One official advised Ahmed that McGurk “has laid out his imaginative and prescient in a top-secret doc shared in some circles of the Washington nationwide safety institution — a plan that envisions Biden touring to the area within the coming months on ‘a victory tour’ to assert credit score for an Israel-Saudi deal as a solution to Gaza’s ache.”
The plan, in line with Ahmed’s reporting, “would use the motivation of assist for reconstruction from Saudi Arabia and presumably different rich Gulf nations like Qatar and the United Arab Emirates to stress each the Palestinians and the Israelis… In this imaginative and prescient, Palestinian leaders would comply with a brand new authorities for each Gaza and the occupied West Bank and to ratchet down their criticisms of Israel, whereas Israel would settle for restricted affect in Gaza.”
Biden has claimed that “one of many causes” Hamas attacked Israel on October 7 was “as a result of they knew I used to be about to sit down down with the Saudis” to debate normalizing relations with Israel. Ahmed famous Thursday that “many US officers and regional specialists say that the US push for a Saudi-Israel settlement impressed resentment amongst Palestinians who needed the Saudis — main gamers within the Muslim-majority world — to withstand such a cut price with out the creation of a Palestinian state.
The White House lashed out over the HuffPost story on McGurk’s post-war plan for Gaza, with National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson accusing Ahmed of creating up quotes from US officers—a baseless allegation that the administration partially walked again after journalists and lawmakers got here to Ahmed’s protection.
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), one in all dozens of US lawmakers calling for a cease-fire in Gaza, wrote on social media earlier this week that Ahmed “has much more credibility than Brett McGurk who was concerned with failed coverage in Iraq, disastrous coverage on Yemen, and the initiative for normalization of Israel and Gulf states with an indifference to the aspirations of the Palestinian folks.”
12 DAYS TO RAISE $50K — HELP US KEEP PUBLISHING!
With the 2024 presidential election on the horizon, the necessity for fearless, truth-telling journalism solely grows higher.
Truth and justice will not win until all of us do what we will — and time is operating out!
Will you make a one-time or month-to-month donation to assist us elevate the $50,000 we have to maintain Truthout publishing?