34 Republican Senators Call Biden’s Potential Plan for Palestinian Refugees a National Security Risk

More than two dozen Republican senators consider a potential proposal by President Biden to accept Palestinian refugees from Gaza a risk to national security, following the administration’s acknowledgment that discussions are underway to help Palestinians in the US bring families from the region.

A Letter The rejection of the potential proposal was led by Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), the No. 3 Republican Party leader, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and 33 colleagues.

This signals another way Republicans could try to attack Biden before the November elections.

While Biden has maintained robust military support for Israel, he is under immense political pressure from Democrats and progressives amid increasingly violent protests in the US to do more to hold Israel accountable for a humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip.

Republicans seized on criticism for not supporting Israel’s right to self-defense following the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, where some 1,200 people were killed in their homes, in the streets and at a music festival, and more. of 250 taken hostage. Hamas still holds approximately 133 Israeli hostages, some with dual American citizenship.

Republican senators are calling on Biden to prioritize securing the release of American hostages over accepting Palestinians as refugees.

“We demand that your administration stop planning to accept refugees from Gaza until it adequately responds to our concerns and focuses its attention on securing the release of American hostages held by Hamas.”

Republican senators further frame accepting Palestinians from Gaza as a national security risk, raising doubts that the Biden administration could prevent members of Hamas or other members of a terrorist group from entering the US.

“Unfortunately, the risk of terrorists entering our homeland is not a hypothetical question,” the senators wrote, citing that border officials have arrested 169 people on the FBI’s terrorist watch list throughout 2023.

The Biden administration has acknowledged that Hamas tried to exploit civilian evacuations for its own benefit. During a weeklong ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in November, the Biden administration said it worked to prevent Hamas fighters disguised as civilians from receiving medical treatment outside Gaza.

Republican senators also raise concerns about the risk of allowing Palestinians, 34 percent of whom say they support Hamas, into the United States. The senators do not recognize that this number represents a decline compared to previous months, in response to the humanitarian catastrophe in the Gaza Strip, according to voting carried out by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research.

“With more than a third of Gazans supporting Hamas militants, we are not confident that your administration can adequately screen this high-risk population for terrorist ties and sympathies before admitting them to the United States,” they wrote. .

The letter comes in the wake of criticism from former Trump administration officials and other lawmakers who rejected the proposed plan to accept refugees and called it a key election issue.

Former Trump White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, now a Fox News co-host, criticized Biden is exploring executive action “not to close the southern border, but to bring in more Palestinian refugees. Wow. Good luck with that in the general election.”

And Rep. Brian Mast (R-Fl.) said in a statement Tuesday that he rejected the Biden administration’s plan to “import” Palestinians from Gaza into the U.S.

“The latest in Joe Biden’s America Last agenda is an absurd scheme to bring into our country the people who cheered when Americans and Israelis were killed, beaten, raped and taken hostage on October 7,” he said. “These are the same people who elected Hamas as their government. These are people who live close to Egypt, but Egypt considers them too great a risk to national security to let them into their country.”