News
US State Department responds to Ambassador Friedman’s settlements statement
The US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman broke with official US policy on Thursday by saying he considers settlements in the West Bank a part of Israel.
Friedman said in an interview published by Walla News that “the settlements are part of Israel,” and that Israel is only “occupying 2 per cent of the West Bank”.
Ambassador Friedman added: “The idea was that Israel would be entitled to secure borders. The existing borders, the 1967 borders, were viewed by everybody as not secure, so Israel would retain a meaningful portion of the West Bank, and it would return that which it didn’t need for peace and security.”
“I think that was always the expectation when resolution 242 was adopted in 1967,” Friedman said, talking about the UN Security Council resolution that calls for Israeli territorial withdrawal from territories captured in 1967 on the one hand, and recognition of Israel’s right to exist in “secure and recognised boundaries” on the other.
UN Resolution 242, which was drafted by the UK Ambassador to the UN, Lord Caradon, is built around two parallel principles: Israeli territorial withdrawal from territories captured in 1967 on the one hand, and recognition of Israel’s right to exist in “secure and recognised boundaries” on the other.
The Ambassador’s remarks drew an angry response from Palestinian officials. Senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said the remarks were “false and misleading” and undermined peace efforts. Nabil Shaath, a senior adviser to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, said they demonstrated “absolute ignorance of facts”.
The US State Department’s spokeswoman, Heather Nauert, responded by emphasising that the Ambassador’s words “should not be read as a way to prejudge the outcome of any negotiations” between Israelis and Palestinians and “should not be read as a shift in US policy”.
On Wednesday Ambassador Friedman met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli Ambassador to the US Ron Dermer and Jason Greenblatt, US President Donald Trump’s Special Representative for International Negotiations.
On Sunday, Netanyahu told the weekly Security Cabinet meeting that Trump is working on a peace plan aimed at an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement.