A former U.S. ambassador to Israel on Friday sharply criticized the far-right government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for seeking to annex Palestinian land in the illegally occupied West Bank.
The Guardian reports Daniel Kurtzer, who served as U.S. ambassador in Tel Aviv during the administration of former President George W. Bush, told members of the Jewish Democratic Council of America that the Biden administration should do more to try to prevent the Israeli government’s "creeping annexation" of the West Bank.
Kurtzer specifically mentioned Israel’s recent "legalization" of nine Jewish-only settler outposts in the West Bank and East Jerusalem that are illegal even under Israeli law, an act he said dealt a major blow to peace.
"It’s also a significant violation of a commitment that the Israeli government made in writing to the American government back in 2004 when, in a letter to the then Bush administration, Israel undertook to dismantle illegal outposts, illegal settlements," he said.
A former US ambassador to Israel has accused Netanyahu’s far-right government of "breaking a written agreement with Washington by legalizing a group of hardline…settlements in the West Bank." He warns of Israel’s “creeping annexation” of the West Bank. https://t.co/PxjlfVwXMP
— Kenneth Roth (@KenRoth) February 24, 2023
"Now you’ve come full circle," Kurtzer added. "Not only are they not dismantling these illegal outposts, but they’re trying to legalize them ex post facto. And there have been many that have been built since that time, so that the number is really quite significant."
Israel has steadily usurped more and more of the West Bank over the decades, using a combination of courts, troops, and apartheid settlers to seize and hold more land on which illegal colonies are built and expanded.
During Netanyahu’s previous term as prime minister, his government pursued plans to annex up to a third of the West Bank.
Under international law, all Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian land are illegal. Most were built on land seized through terrorism and ethnic cleansing during the Nakba, or catastrophe, when more than 700,000 Arabs were expelled during the establishment and consolidation of modern Israel in 1947-49, and during the conquest of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza, and the Syrian Golan Heights in 1967.
For context.
As two non Palestinian leaders seek to determine the fate and future of Palestine and its people for the countless time.
Here is a visual of the loss of Palestinian land from 1946-2000
?? Palestinian Land
?? Israeli Land pic.twitter.com/WbiVVw0Qik— Dr. Jennifer Cassidy (@OxfordDiplomat) January 28, 2020
From 1978 until 2019, the U.S. State Department also considered Israeli settlements unlawful.
According to the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, more than 620,000 Israelis currently live in about 140 settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. While Israel offers every Jew in the world the right to settle in Israel, it has – against U.N. resolutions and international law – refused to allow the approximately five million Palestinian refugees alive today to return to their homeland.
While successive American administrations have proclaimed their opposition to Israel’s construction and expansion of illegal settlements, U.S. military aid to Israel – currently at around $3.8 billion annually – has continued unabated and unimperiled regardless of Israeli policies and actions.
Brett Wilkins is is staff writer for Common Dreams. Based in San Francisco, his work covers issues of social justice, human rights and war and peace. This originally appeared at CommonDreams and is reprinted with the author’s permission.
U.S. ambassador in Tel Aviv during the administration of former President George W. Bush, told members of the Jewish Democratic Council of America that the Biden administration should do more to try to prevent the Israeli government’s “creeping annexation” of the West Bank.
“you don’t have to be jewish to be a zionist – i am a zionist”
……. Joe Biden
I am an idiot. I voted for Biden. Daily, I feel like self flagellation to cleanse me of my error. By the same token, I did not want Mr. Trump to be my President for four more years. In its current form, the DNC does not give me any hope. In its current form, the GOP is something from a Stephen King novel. Schrodinger’s cat, I am.
Admitting you made a voting error is – imo – cooler than not making the error in the first place.
It shows you have an open mind.
A damn rare thing these days.
Two state solution was always a “pie in the sky” promise.
“ Under international law, all Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian land are illegal. Most were built on land seized through terrorism and ethnic cleansing during the Nakba”
According to the author, even Tel Aviv is a settlement. Here lies the problem. “From the river to the sea…” are not just empty words. They represent the Palestinian hope to recover all the land upon which the modern state of Israel was established.
I seriously don’t think the problem is that the Palestinians might seize all the land from the nuclear armed regional superpower Israel backed by the world’s superpower. “From the river to the sea” is the stated belief of Israel’s leaders that Palestine be wiped off the map.
You can’t make a deal with someone who has no intention of keeping their word.
No “deal” is required for the Israeli regime to vacate the territory outside its borders that it illegally occupies. It could do that unilaterally.
Israel acquired this territory in 1967 in a defensive war.
International law did not prohibit, and may even have actually sanctioned, defensive conquest as of 1967.
Except that Israel has spent the time since then pretending it DIDN’T acquire the territory so that it doesn’t have to absorb the population with full citizenship rights.
That’s kind of a rock and a hard place situation. Israel withdrawing to its only internationally recognized borders (per UNR 181) or even to the pre-1967 lines, might present military complexities. Israel annexing the territory it now occupies would endanger the ethno-tribal composition its regime treats as sacrosanct.
But the situation is what it is. Be occupiers/squatters, or don’t be occupiers/squatters.
I speak for no one but myself. I was happy after Oslo. Many Israelis were as well. The days of two states living in peace had almost arrived. Sadly it did not pan out. There is blame on both sides. But there were legitimate offers made by Israel to which the Palestinians responded with violence. I was happy to relinquish most of the territories captured in 67 for real peace. So were most Israelis. The hard lessons of Gaza and Iran have been absorbed in Israel. A completely independent Palestinian state with its own armed forces and total control of its borders is a threat. Imagine a completely sovereign and hostile Palestine allowing Iranian arms and forces into the West Bank. Israelis do not want to rule over 4 million Palestinians but the alternative of unilateral withdrawal that does not provide Israel with peace or the ability to defend its borders is untenable. The older I get, the more I realize how intractable and maybe even hopeless this conflict is. Depressing.
LOTS of present countries ‘stole’ the lands they presently occupy in wars.
It’s called ‘life’.
I despise the way the Israelis are treating the Palestinians.
But the Palestinians HAVE to get over taking back ‘their land’. Or they might never get their own nation.
They lost a war with Israel almost 80 years ago.
They need to get over it already.
Why doesn’t Bibi get it over with and throw all the Palestinian’s in a gas chamber?
That seems to be his dream – the pig.
And no…I am not anti-semitic.
Just anti-Zionist.