US Will Work Closely With Israel’s New Government and Judge It on Policies, Blinken Says

The United States plans to work closely with the new government in Israel and it will judge the right-wing government based on its policies and not by the people tapped to fill the ministerial positions, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said. Blinken spoke in Washington Sunday to the left-wing Jewish organization J Street. “We will gauge the government by the policies it pursues rather than individual personalities,” Blinken said. “We will hold it to the mutual standards we’ve established in our relationship over the past seven decades and we will speak honestly and respectfully with our Israeli friends as partners always should.” The government headed by former Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is expected to be finalized in the coming days. Blinken said in his address that the US continues to consider Jerusalem to be the capital of Israel, but that the city also is central to the vision of the two-state solution. Meanwhile, Blinken also stressed that the more than $3 billion the US provides to Israel in military aid is “sacrosanct.”