Israeli settlers court Republican religious right after Hamas attacks

Ruth Lieberman, a Jewish settler in the Israeli occupied West Bank, is determined to thwart international pressure for a sovereign Palestinian state. And her friendships with prominent U.S. Republicans from the party's religious right are helping, she says.

Weeks after the Oct. 7 attack by Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, Lieberman hosted pro-Israel, conservative Senator Mike Lee, a Mormon, for a Shabbat meal in her family home, Senate records show.

The conversation turned to Palestinian statehood, and Lieberman told Lee the attack had hardened Israeli opposition to the idea, she said in an interview from her home near Bethlehem, in Alon Shvut, within one of the West Bank's largest clusters of settlements, known as Gush Etzion. Lee did not respond to requests for comment.

Such visits are helping align the views of senior Republican Party officials with settlers and the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the wake of Oct. 7, said Lieberman, a political consultant who often hosts U.S. delegations visiting settlements.