US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo´s announcement that the United States no longer considers Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem as part of a US-sponsored peace process, experts said on Monday. Do not violate international law - contrary to decades of US foreign policy, "the logical next step in the Trump administration´s efforts to reshape US policy toward the Palestinian-Israeli conflict," said former US negotiator Aaron Miller.
Miller said in a press statement that the resolution "will send a message to Israel that it can build more settlements in the West Bank - they have agreed in principle and legitimacy - in resolute action was not necessary - makes the prospects for a peace settlement is unlikely." Domestic politics is part of the matter, and Netanyahu has provided a lifeline for days before Gantz´s time expires.
Former US ambassadors to Tel Aviv, Dan Kurtzer and Dan Shapiro, considered that the Trump administration´s decision not to violate Israeli settlements to international laws is a dangerous development that would dash any hope for a two-state solution and push Israel toward a single state, forcing it to choose between losing its Jewish identity or its democratic identity and governing. Apartheid.
Presidential candidate Senator Bernie Snenders said Israeli settlements were illegal. "Once again, Trump is isolating Washington to please his extremist base."
David Makovsky, a researcher at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy close to Israel who served as special envoy for negotiations for the last round of Palestinian-Israeli negotiations (2013-1014) during the Obama administration, said: "I think the work has been done for a long time. Something he (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu) wanted to be credited with, "and is a lifeline for Netanyahu, who is fighting for his political life and avoiding jail." I think this is about it, and I think there were talks between Netanyahu and Ambassador David Friedman.
Friedman, US President Donald Trump´s ambassador to Israel, has been a financial and political supporter of the settlement movement and maintains a seat on the board of the settlement of Yit El along with the family of Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of the US president authorized to file the "deal of the century."
Jeremy Ben-Ami, president of the Jewish-American organization J Street, commented at a time when Prime Minister Netanyahu is struggling hard for political survival and facing an impending accusation of corruption. Two days before the deadline for the leader of the "Blue White" party Benny Gantz to form a government or hold new elections Israel, giving the impression that the US move by the Trump administration is designed to support Netanyahu while facing one of the most difficult political battles in his life.
"The president and his advisers have given the Israeli government a selective list to expand settlements, consolidate the occupation and move towards the official annexation of the West Bank. The Jew. "
US State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortigas answered a question from Jerusalem by e-mail: "What international laws are not violated by Israeli settlements?" In response, “it does not violate the Fourth Geneva Convention”, which contradicts the positions of experts.
The UN Human Rights Office reiterated its consistent position on Tuesday, 19 November 2019, that Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory violate international law, refuting the Trump administration´s position.
The United Nations warns that what the United States did on Monday gave Israel the green light to build Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank by abandoning its previous four-decade-old stance as "contrary to international law". "One country´s change to the notion of violation of existing international law or its interpretation by the International Court of Justice and the UN Security Council does not change its reality," UN human rights spokesman Robert Colville told a news conference in Geneva, referring to Washington´s decision as invalid.
The move comes as the last in a series that the United States has fully endorsed Netanyahu´s stance on recognizing occupied Jerusalem as Israel´s capital, the occupied Golan under Israeli sovereignty, cutting off aid to UNRWA, closing the PLO office in Washington and the US consulate in East Jerusalem, and cutting aid to power Experts say that this is the American peace plan known as the deal of the century.
The move culminated in US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo´s abandonment of a legal opinion issued by the US State Department in 1978 that the Israeli settlements in the occupied territories "contravene international law."
