Pompeo is right. As is explained in The Palestinian Delusion: The Catastrophic History of the Middle East Peace Process, no one but Israel has any legal right to the land known as the “West Bank.”
“Pompeo announces reversal of longstanding US policy on Israeli settlements,” by Jennifer Hansler, Nicole Gaouette and Jeremy Diamond, CNN, November 18, 2019
(CNN)US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Monday announced a major reversal of the US’ longstanding policy on Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, rejecting a 1978 State Department legal opinion that deemed the settlements “inconsistent with international law.”
The announcement, which breaks with international law and consensus, is the latest in a string of hardline, pro-Israeli moves that are likely to inflame tensions between the Trump administration and Palestinians and widen the divide between the Trump administration and traditional US allies in Europe.
“After carefully studying all sides of the legal debate, this administration agrees with President Reagan: the establishment of Israeli civilian settlements in the West Bank is not, per se, inconsistent with international law,” Pompeo said, citing President Ronald Reagan’s 1981 assessment that the settlements were not “inherently illegal.”
Pompeo said the US government is “expressing no view on the legal status of any individual settlement” or “addressing or prejudging the ultimate status of the West Bank.”
He said the conclusion was “based on the unique facts, history and circumstances presented by the establishment of civilian settlements in the West Bank.”…
Angemon says
Right, because, historically, “Palestinians” have been soooooooooooo supportive of the US, Trump or no Trump… Cut aid to the PA – they can the US and the EU for free. Baby murderers don’t deserve taxpayer money.
Rob says
Israel didn’t take the West Bank off the Palestinians, in ’67, they took it off the Jordanians.
carpediadem says
The Israelis took it BACK from the illegal occupiers the Jordanians who illegally invaded and stole it in the 1948 war against Israel.
mortimer says
Thanks, Rob, for the succinct summary. Indeed, the ‘two-state’ solution was created by the British Foreign Office in 1923 with the illegal creation of the Emirate of Trans-Jordan. UK did nothing to stop the invasion and annexation of the West Bank by the new Kingdom of Trans-Jordan. Jordan stole the West Bank. A whole generation of West Bank Arabs grew up thinking they were Jordanians, learning from Jordanian text books and giving allegiance to the Jordanian king and his government.
clive delmonte says
Excellent news from the US. Now the civilised world can move forward out of the deadlock which suited only the corrupt “Palestinian” “leaders” who understand that a “Palestinian” state would likely sever their access to further theft of US funding.
somehistory says
I just read this on the news feed. One of the lines said something about this not helping the ‘peace process between Israel and the ***moslims,*** although it did use a different label for those who really do everything they can to impede peace wherever they are.
Anything short of Israel and all others who recognize the danger of islam just dropping dead and falling into space, never to be seen or heard from again, will not cause the moslims to stop fighting Israel.
To make this “peace,” either Israel, Jews, Christians, and all others, including dogs and pigs (hogs, swine), must ‘go’ or islam must. Wait, moslims would have to go also, because there is no peace between the different sects, tribes, factions, terror groups, individual moslims with any other.
The conclusion is; islam has to go. Nothing short will do for “peace.”
Hugh Fitzgerald says
The entire West Bank was assigned, by the Mandate for Palestine, to be part of the territory that would become the Jewish National Home. When Jordan seized the West Bank (and gave it its current name to efface “Judea and Samaria” as too Jewish), it became the “occupying ;power” from 1948 to 1967. When Israel won the territory by force of arms in the Six-Day War, it already had legal title, based on the Mandate,but at long last was in a position to enforce that title.
Furthermore, according to Lord Caradon, who wrote U.N. Resolution 242, Israel had another, independent claim to the West Bank, based on its right to “secure and recognized boundaries,” which Israel itself would determine. If it thinks it needs part or all of the West Bank to adequately defend itself, it has a right to hold onto it — territory it won in a war of self-defense.
mortimer says
Agreeing with Robert Spencer and Hugh Fitzgerald about the inclusion of Judea and Samaria in the Jewish homeland. This only became a problem later on when Arabs decided to haggle to get more than 76% of the original Mandatory Palestine.
None of the issues we see today would have occurred if the UK had not dragged its feet and vacillated on the territory of the Jewish homeland. They should have made the decision and stuck with it, but once the Arabs saw that the process was negotiable, they pursued a 90-year-long PSYCHODRAMA.
The psychodrama will end after the United States and United Kingdom declare that the West Bank is part of Israel. That will be the end of it. The Arab world will go back to sleep and Israel will get on with becoming the superpower of the Middle East.
Rarely says
Except, of course, that Israel doesn’t want the West Bank. At least it doesn’t want the millions of muslims living there as Israeli citizens. It would mean the immediate destruction of Israel.
It is arguable that any legal right Israel may have to the West Bank only goes back to 1967 since Israel accepted the UN partition plan that did not include the West Bank and its right is the right of conquest (from the de facto owner – Jordan).
To try to give Israel legitimacy over the West Bank for Biblical or koranic reasons is simply plain stupid.
gravenimage says
Muslims regularly used the “West Bank” as a base to wage violent Jihad against Israel. Are you OK with this?
Hugh Fitzgerald says
The Jews did accept the U.N. Partition Plan, but when the Arabs unanimously rejected it, that acceptance did not remain open but ceased to exist.
See Restatement of Contracts, Offer and Acceptance.
An Offer does not stay open forever; if the other side rejects it, the Offer disappears.
Israel’s “legal right” to the West Bank goes back to the Palestine Mandate itself. This is not a “right of conquest”; it was Jordan that held the West Bank not by legal right but only by “right of conquest.”
gravenimage says
Very true, Hugh.
carpediadem says
Jordan is not an owner – it was an illegal occupier.
Infidel says
And Israel was peacefully enforcing that until President Bush XLI did his best to armtwist Yitzhak Shamir in the aftermath of Operation Desert Storm, and after Shamir was defeated in the elections, Yitzhak Rabin, into taking back the Palis.
More than Obama’s, it’s the Bush legacies – both of them – that Trump needs to repeal!
Walter Sieruk says
If Pompeo is correct in saying that Israeli settlements, as in the West Bank, are not inconsistent with international law. Then good news. Nevertheless the even better than this good news is the Great news which his that that God had given all this land that now composes the State of Israel, including all of the West Bank, to the Jewish people. This may be found in the Bible, as seen in, for example, Genesis 28:13-15. 35:10-12. Deuteronomy 32:48,49. Psalm 105:7-11. In other words the Jews have tall this land by Divine Right. Furthermore, the Jewish people should have this land by historic rights as shown in First Kings 4:20,21, 24,25. 8:55, 56.
As the Bible informs its reader in Psalm 135:4. “For the Lord has chosen Jacob for Himself, Israel for His special treasure. “ [N.K.V.]
gravenimage says
Pompeo: Israeli settlements in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) are “not inconsistent with international law”
………………..
I just heard this this morning. Excellent news!
Gabriel Rizkallah says
This is such a thorny issue, which probably will never be appropriately solved. Israel goes back to the time of the prophet Abraham. The Palestinians might have settled in the area from the sixth/seventh century. The question is, where they are supposed to go?
marc says
The other side of the river in Jordan, the larger section of palastine that was gifted in 1917 in the Balfour Declaration, when the intention was the “establishment of a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine” on the west side.
Wellington says
Gabriel Rizkallah: There already exists a Palestinian state (to the extent that it is valid to describe Arabs in the region as “Palestinian,” itself a controversial matter). That state is Jordan, which was originally part of the British Mandate until in 1922 some 78% of said Mandate was sectioned off for Arabs only, no Jews allowed (even in graves).
Infidel says
Not just Jordan: if one goes by either Arab or Turkish era political boundaries, the entire Levant – ash-Sham – was known outside as Syria, mainly based on the capital being Damascus, not Jerusalem. In other words, there were no ‘Palestinaians’, no ‘Jordanians’ and no ‘Lebanese’ (aside from the Phoenicians): there were only Syrians. If one goes by that, then the ‘Palestinians’ are also Syrians, and could just as easily move to Syria. Like when Saladin reigned, his capital was Damascus on the Asian side of the Suez, and Cairo on the African side. And he ruled Palestine, Jerusalem and whatever parts of the Holy Land that King Richard I of England and King Phillip of France didn’t conquer.
Of course, the Assads would hate a Palestinian migration to Syria, since that would just make that country even more Sunni than it already is, making their overlordship of the Sunnis even more difficult.
gravenimage says
Good posts, Marc, Wellington, and Infidel.