“I object to the decision and think it is wrong,” Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen stated.
By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News
The Biden administration has ordered that any American government entity participating in scientific-technological ventures with Israeli companies located beyond the so-called Green Line end its collaboration. leading to a protest from Foreign Minister Eli Cohen.
An unnamed State Department official told Kan News that the directive “simply reflects the position of the United States over the years, which has been reaffirmed by this administration, according to which the status of the geographical areas that were under the Israeli administration after June 5, 1967 is a matter which remains subject to negotiations on their final status.”
Participating in these joint projects is thus “inconsistent with American policy,” he told Walla in a separate call.
The official added that the U.S. “greatly appreciates” the scientific and technological cooperation “with the “start-up nation,” saying that this solid cooperation will continue, the Kan report said.
Foreign Minister Eli Cohen criticized the move Sunday, telling reporters, “I object to the decision and think it is wrong.”
“In similar cases in the past, the Israeli government fully reimbursed parties damaged by such decisions,” he added.
Israel has agreements with other governments stipulating that their cooperative work would exclude companies in Judea and Samaria, the Golan Heights and eastern Jerusalem. For example, the multi-year, $111 billion Horizon Europe program, in which Israeli institutions bid for EU research and development grants, has this limitation.
In 2020, during the Trump presidency, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then-U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman signed a protocol removing these restrictions from three 1970s-era cooperative agreements.
“Plainly, this geographic restriction within these three agreements was an anachronism,” Friedman said at the festive ceremony, which was held at Ariel University in Samaria. “We are righting an old wrong, and we are strengthening yet again the unbreakable bond between our two countries.”
Friedman said on Sunday that the reversal was a mistake.
“Make no mistake,” he tweeted. “The United States, by this action, is embracing the BDS Movement, violating a binding bilateral agreement with Israel, and creating a lose/lose dynamic whereby the people of the region — Israelis and Palestinians — will lose the most.”
Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) condemned the Biden administration’s “antisemitic discrimination against Israel” by “instated a boycott against scientific and technological cooperation with Jews living in Judea and Samaria.”
He blasted the White House in his statement, charging it with being “pathologically obsessed with undermining Israel. Since day one of their administration they have launched campaigns against our Israeli allies that are granular, whole of government and done in secret.”
Referring to the latter point, he wrote, “And of course it was sent to Congress in secret, and only revealed because reporters found out. The Biden administration defends funding scientific researching Wuhan with the Chinese Communist Party but they’re discriminating against and banning cooperation with Jews based on where they live.”
Cruz vowed to “do everything possible to reverse this decision.”
Walla reported that the State Department had decided to rescind the emendations two years ago but it only became pertinent recently, when researchers in Ariel University applied for a grant to one of the relevant funds. This would disconnect it from the Netanyahu government’s latest approvals to construct thousands of housing units in Judea and Samaria, which the White House firmly opposes.
The U.S. informed Israel of the change two weeks ago, according to the reports.
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