In split from EU, America shifts policy on Israeli settlements
ISRAELI SETTLEMENTS on occupied Palestinian land are not necessarily illegal, the United States has declared.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that it had not “advanced the cause of peace” in the region to say the settlements were inconsistent with international law.
“The hard truth is that there will never be a judicial resolution to the conflict, and arguments about who is right and who is wrong as a matter of international law will not bring peace,” he said on Monday.
It should be for Israeli courts to rule on the legality of individual settlements, he added.
But there was widespread international opposition to the US announcement, which came a week after an EU court tightened rules on food imports from West Bank settlements.
Winemaker Psagot, which is based in a settlement close to Ramallah, lost its battle to label its products as “Made in Israel”. The court said it must be clearly indicated that the product was made in a West Bank settlement.
Today nearly 700,000 Israelis — nearly a tenth of Israel’s entire Jewish population — live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, the territories captured by Israel during the Six Day War in 1967.
The first settlements were established shortly after the conflict.
Most of the international community, including Britain, considers the territories to be occupied by Israel and opposes settlement construction.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who celebrated the announcement by visiting a settlement near Jerusalem, said the US had corrected a “historical wrong” and recognised the “reality on the ground”.
Opposition leader Benny Gantz also welcomed the move.
Palestinians said it was another example of President Donald Trump’s preferential treatment of Israel.
Saeb Erekat, a former Palestinian chief peace negotiator said the Trump administration was “demonstrating the extent to which it’s threatening the international system with its unceasing attempts to replace international law with the ‘law of the jungle’,”
But settler groups renewed calls for Israel to annex the settlements.
Oded Revivi, foreign envoy for the Yesha Council, said: “Now is the time to take action utilising our political and legal platforms to apply Israeli law.”
The UK Foreign Office reiterated Britain’s position that settlements “are illegal under international law, present an obstacle to peace and threaten the physical viability of a two-state solution”.
France said it regretted decisions that could encourage settlement building, while Russia said it was “another measure contradicting” the legal footing of a future peace deal.