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AIPAC’s gathering this week is focused on how to elect pro-Israel candidates in 2024
WASHINGTON (JTA) — With a new right-wing government in Israel raising alarm bells among many in the United States, the timing seemed ripe for a gathering by AIPAC, which regularly convenes bigwigs to talk about the U.S.-Israel relationship. But the group’s conference this week in Washington is focusing not on that relationship but on American electoral politics.
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s “Political Leadership Forum” this week is closed to press. But it offers the latest signal of how the group’s activities have evolved from the days when its policy conferences were feel-good affairs that sought to elevate pro-Israel policy above nitty-gritty politicking.
The forum is bringing in “1,000 of our top political leaders to strategize for the 2024 election cycle,” an AIPAC official told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
It is the lobby’s first major gathering in Washington since the COVID-19 pandemic descended on the United States three years ago, just as the group was holding its 2020 conference. In the intervening years, AIPAC announced the establishment of two political action committees, ending a policy that had for decades been sacrosanct of keeping out of direct electoral politics.
“The meeting is an opportunity to review the results of the 2022 election and to inspire and equip our top activists as they prepare for the 2024 elections,” the official said. “They will hear from AIPAC leaders and top political practitioners about the political landscape the pro-Israel movement faces, and what they can do to continue and deepen their political involvement. As always, they will see how increased political involvement is an invaluable part of our efforts to strengthen the U.S.-Israel relationship.”
AIPAC’s political action committees include a conventional PAC, AIPAC PAC, which relies on smaller donations, and a Super PAC, United Democracy Project, which has unlimited spending power. Together, the PACs raised over $50 million. The success rate was high, with UDP’s preferred candidates prevailing in eight of the 10 races it involved itself in, and AIPAC PAC backing 342 winners out of 365.
That made AIPAC a force to be reckoned with in a shifting political landscape, but directly backing candidates also exacted a price at a complicated time in the history of U.S.-Israel relations. Liberals faulted AIPAC for backing more than 100 Republicans who would not certify Joe Biden’s presidential election even after a deadly insurrection aimed at keeping Congress from doing so. Conservatives wondered why AIPAC was backing Democrats who backed the 2015 Iran nuclear deal so reviled by AIPAC.
A theme of the get-together this week was how to navigate that polarized environment. Rep. Josh Gottheimer, a New Jersey Democrat, joined Brian Fitzpatrick, a Pennsylvania Republican, to discuss maintaining bipartisan support for Israel, at a time when a vocal Israel-critical minority maintains a degree of influence among Democrats. “We are working to make sure that the U.S.-Israel relationship remains bipartisan and durable,” Gottheimer said. Gottheimer and Fitzpatrick co-chair the bipartisan Problem-Solvers Caucus.
There was policy as well, with a video conference address by Israel’s freshly elected prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and one in person by Lloyd Austin, the U.S. defense secretary. Netanyahu suggested in his remarks that differences with Democrats over Iran policy were no longer as sharp as they were when Netanyahu faced down President Barack Obama in 2015 over the Iran nuclear deal. (AIPAC’s opposition to the deal at the time spurred a similar fly-in of top activists in a failed bid to quash it in Congress.).
“It’s time to close ranks between Israel and the United States — and others,” Netanyahu said of the Iran issue. “And I look forward to discussing this issue with President Biden and his team. I think there is more of a meeting of the minds today than there has ever been.”
President Joe Biden initially sought to revive the deal, which former President Donald Trump quit in 2018, but those plans are moribund because of Iran’s deadly repression of pro-woman protests and its support for Russia in its war against Ukraine.
Meanwhile, the Biden administration is carefully monitoring the moves made by Netanyahu’s new government, formed in coalition with right-wing extremist parties. The government is seeking to diminish the country’s judiciary, and some of its leaders are aggressively pursuing the annexation of the West Bank — a move that the Biden administration opposes.
Neither Netanyahu nor Gottheimer addressed Israel’s current political climate in the partial remarks that were released by their offices.
AIPAC shuttered its springtime policy conferences, which attracted more than 15,000 people, after its conference in March 2020 drew unwanted attention because of two of the conference-goers appeared to be spreaders of the then-unfamiliar COVID 19 virus. It has created a structure of videoconferences and smaller local get-togethers as a substitute and has not scheduled large gatherings even as other groups have resumed their pre-pandemic conventions Still, it has not counted out reviving the conferences.
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US-Brokered Peace Talks Break Off Without Deal After Overnight Russian Bombardment of Ukraine
Some windows glow in a residential building left without heating and facing long power cuts after critical civil infrastructure was hit by recent Russian missile and drone strikes, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv, Ukraine, January 23, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Alina Smutko
Ukraine and Russia ended a second day of US-brokered talks in Abu Dhabi on Saturday without a deal but with more talks expected next weekend, even as overnight Russian airstrikes knocked out power for over a million Ukrainians amid subzero winter cold.
Statements after the conclusion of the talks did not indicate that any agreements had been reached, but Moscow and Kyiv both said they were open to further dialogue.
“The central focus of the discussions was the possible parameters for ending the war,” President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on X after the meeting.
More discussions were expected next Sunday in Abu Dhabi, said a US official who spoke to reporters immediately after the talks.
“We saw a lot of respect in the room between the parties because they were really looking to find solutions,” said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
“We got to real granular detail and (we feel) that next Sunday will be, God willing, another meeting where we push this deal towards its final culmination.”
A UAE government spokesperson said there was face-to-face engagement between Ukraine and Russia — rare in the almost four-year-old war triggered by a full-scale Russian invasion — and negotiators tackled “outstanding elements” of Washington’s peace framework.
Looking beyond next week’s negotiations in Abu Dhabi, the US official voiced hopes for further talks, possibly in Moscow or Kyiv.
“Those sorts of meetings have to happen, in our view, before we get a bilateral between (Russian President Vladimir) Putin and Zelensky, or a trilateral with Putin, Zelensky and President Trump. But I don’t think we’re so far away from that,” the official said.
BOMBARDMENT OF UKRAINE BEFORE SECOND DAY OF TALKS
The bombardment of Ukraine’s capital Kyiv and its second-largest city Kharkiv by hundreds of Russian drones and missiles prompted Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha – who was not at the talks – to accuse Putin of acting “cynically.”
“This barbaric attack once again proves that Putin’s place is not at (US President Donald Trump’s) Board of Peace, but in the dock of the special tribunal,” Sybiha wrote on X.
“His missiles hit not only our people, but also the negotiation table.”
Saturday was scheduled to be the final day of the talks, billed by Zelensky as the first trilateral meeting under the US-mediated peace process.
The UAE statement said the talks were conducted in a “constructive and positive atmosphere” and included discussions about confidence-building measures.
Kyiv is under mounting Trump administration pressure to make concessions to reach a deal to end Europe’s deadliest and most destructive conflict since World War Two.
US peace envoy Steve Witkoff said at the annual World Economic Forum in Davos this week that a lot of progress had been made in the talks and only one sticking point remained. However, Russian officials have sounded more skeptical.
RUSSIA WANTS ALL OF DONBAS
After Saturday’s talks, Zelensky said the US delegation had raised the issue of “potential formats for formalizing the parameters for ending the war, as well as the security conditions required to achieve this”.
The US official said the proposed security protocols were widely seen as “very, very strong.”
“The Ukrainians and many of the national security advisors of all the European countries have reviewed these security protocols. And to a person, and this includes NATO, including (NATO Secretary General) Mark Rutte, they have expressed the fact that they’ve never seen security protocols this robust,” the official said.
Ahead of the discussions, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday Russia had not dropped its insistence on Ukraine yielding all of its eastern area of Donbas, the industrial heartland grouping the regions of Donetsk and Luhansk.
Putin’s demand that Ukraine surrender the 20 percent it still holds of Donetsk – about 5,000 sq km (1,900 sq miles) – has proven a major stumbling block to any deal. Most countries recognize Donetsk as part of Ukraine. Putin says Donetsk is part of Russia’s “historical lands.”
Zelensky has ruled out giving up territory that Russia has not been able to capture in four years of grinding, attritional warfare against a much smaller foe. Polls show little appetite among Ukrainians for any territorial concessions.
Russia says it wants a diplomatic solution but will keep working to achieve its goals by military means as long as a negotiated solution remains elusive.
Umerov, the secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, said late on Friday that the first day of talks had addressed parameters for ending the war and the “further logic of the negotiation process.”
Meanwhile, Ukraine came under renewed Russian bombardment.
Ukraine’s air force said Russia had launched 375 drones and 21 missiles in the overnight salvo, which once again targeted energy infrastructure, knocking out power and heat for large parts of Kyiv, the capital. At least one person was killed and over 30 injured.
Before Saturday’s bombardment, Kyiv had already endured two mass overnight attacks since the New Year that cut electricity and heating to hundreds of residential buildings. Ukraine’s deputy prime minister said on Saturday that 800,000 people in Kyiv – where temperatures were around -10 degrees Celsius – had been left without power after the latest Russian assault.
Zelensky said on Saturday Russia’s heavy overnight strikes showed that agreements on further air defense support made with Trump in Davos this week must be “fully implemented.”
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Conscription Law Heads to Final Vote in Knesset Amid Political Showdown
A drone view of Jerusalem with the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, in Jerusalem, Feb. 4, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ilan Rosenberg
i24 News – Israel’s conscription law is reaching its final stretch as the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee is expected to complete its discussions this week before bringing it to a first reading vote in the Knesset plenum, i24NEWS’s Ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) affairs correspondent Ari Kalman reported Sunday.
The legal counsel of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee is expected to support the legislation, subject to changes that will be made in the wording of the law. However, it is not certain that this will satisfy its opponents. Meanwhile, opponents of the law within the coalition insist that they have “a majority that can defeat the law.”
Against the backdrop of the crisis with the Haredi parties, the state budget is expected to be brought to a first reading vote on Monday. Recently, i24NEWS reported that the Knesset’s legal advisor, Attorney Sagit Afik, told Knesset members that at least two months are required from the moment it is placed on the Knesset table until its final approval. Therefore, the coalition is required to submit it this week in order for it to be approved on time.
The problem facing the coalition and Prime Minister Netanyahu is that this year there is not enough time to pass the budget by the end of March, as Passover Eve falls on April 1, and therefore the budget needs to be approved in its third reading by March 25, two months from today.
Amid the pressure and the attempt to bring the budget to a vote, the Hasidic Council of Torah Sages published its decision this month against the conscription law: “The Council expresses its deep pain and concern over the campaign of harassment against Torah students by various authorities, the harm to them and to their rights, their public denigration and humiliation for being students of God’s Torah; something that is becoming increasingly severe.”
They also wrote that the Council of Torah Sages demands a law “without personal and institutional sanctions and without arrests, as has been customary all these years. Any other legislation that harms Torah scholars whose Torah study is their profession, imposes sanctions on them, or sets quotas is unacceptable. And it must be opposed with all force.”
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Syria and Kurdish Forces Extend Ceasefire by 15 Days Amid Rising Tensions
A person holds flags as people celebrate after the Kurdish-led and US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which controls much of Syria’s oil-rich northeast, has signed a deal agreeing to integrate into Syria’s new state institutions, the Syrian presidency said on Monday, in Damascus, Syria, March 11, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Khalil Ashawi
i24 News – A four-day ceasefire between Syrian government forces and Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which expired on Saturday night, has been extended by 15 days, officials from both sides said, providing a temporary respite amid rising tensions in northeast Syria.
The extension, effective from 11 PM local time, was announced by Syria’s defense ministry to support an ongoing US operation transferring Islamic State detainees from Syrian prisons into Iraq. The SDF confirmed the agreement was reached through international mediation, while dialogue with Damascus continues.
The ceasefire follows recent advances by government troops, who seized swathes of northern and eastern territory from the SDF in the past two weeks, consolidating control under President Ahmed al-Sharaa. Sharaa had initially given SDF forces until Saturday to lay down arms or face renewed fighting.
The US has been conducting shuttle diplomacy to establish a lasting ceasefire and facilitate the integration of the SDF, which was Washington’s main partner in Syria for years, into the state led by Sharaa. Senior US and French officials reportedly warned Sharaa against sending troops into remaining Kurdish-held areas to avoid potential mass abuses against civilians.
As tensions escalated ahead of the Saturday deadline, SDF forces reinforced positions in Qamishli, Hasakeh, and Kobane. Kurdish security sources indicated the buildup was precautionary amid fears of renewed conflict.
The offensive earlier this month marked the culmination of a year of rising tensions. Sharaa, whose forces toppled Bashar al-Assad in late 2024, aims to bring all of Syria under state control, while Kurdish authorities have resisted merging their autonomous civilian and military institutions into Sharaa’s administration.
With key oil fields, hydroelectric dams, and facilities holding Islamic State detainees now under government control, the 15-day ceasefire offers a brief pause. The situation remains fragile, and the international community continues to monitor developments closely.