The US policy shift on Israeli settlements will not stop Palestinians persevering
Israeli border police guard Ofra:
Raja Shehadeh writes in The Guardian:
The day before US secretary of state Mike Pompeo’s announcement that the United States now considers the Israeli settlements in the West Bank to be legal, I accompanied an American group of writers on a tour of the settlements around Ramallah.
It was organised by Breaking the Silence, a group formed by Israeli veterans who oppose the occupation. Yehuda Shaul, the co-founder of the organisation, led the tour. He said that, from 1967 on, the settlement project was state-driven, neither prompted nor led by the settlers. Since then, the US position had been that settlement building in the occupied territories was contrary to international law. And yet no material action has ever been taken by any US administration to force Israel to stop building – except for one moment, in 1991, when president George Bush refused to provide a guarantee for $10bn in loans to Israel over settlement expansion. So what is new about Trump’s announcement?
It was to be expected that this latest US declaration would be followed by a barrage of counter-statements from the EU – as well as the EU’s foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini – to the effect that “all settlement activity is illegal under international law”. But what purpose do these statements serve when the law is not being enforced? The answer is: none.