Lobbying 2014: Palestine seeks greater US 'balance'

The Palestinian delegation to Washington is on a long-shot mission to get what it considers a fair shake from Congress.

Ambassador Maen Rashid Areikat says he wants to see more balance between Palestinian and Israeli interests, particularly on Capitol Hill. While lawmakers’ rock-solid support for Israel was on full display even as the civilian death toll in Gaza soared, Areikat says the shifts in public opinion are beginning to have an effect on lawmakers.

“We keep a tab of what statements members of Congress made,” he told Al-Monitor. “Many of them had balanced statements about the situation, and we try to reach out to them to tell them we appreciate their balanced statements; and those who are imbalanced, we send them information and we tell them that your information that comes from one side is not necessarily accurate.”

Areikat said he met with several Republican senators over the past month — notably key appropriator Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz. and Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H. — while the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations panel on Near Eastern Affairs, Tim Kaine, D-Va., hosted a briefing for him. He told them that recent polling shows a majority of Americans want the US to take a balanced approach in the conflict.