US set to announce it is softening its position on settlements

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is expected to announce today that the US is softening its position on Israeli settlements in the West Bank, the latest in a series of Trump administration moves that weaken Palestinian claims to statehood.

Pompeo plans to repudiate a 1978 State Department legal opinion that held that civilian settlements in the occupied territories are “inconsistent with international law.”

The Trump administration views the opinion, the basis for long-standing US opposition to expanding the settlements, as a distraction and believes any legal questions about the issue should be addressed by Israeli courts, according to a draft of Pompeo’s remarks on the policy obtained by The Associated Press.

“Calling the establishment of civilian settlements inconsistent with international law has not advanced the cause of peace,” Pompeo says in the draft. “The hard truth is that there will never be a judicial resolution to the conflict, and arguments about who is right and who is wrong as a matter of international law will not bring peace.”

Pompeo is expected to say that the US will not take a position on the legality of specific settlements and that that the new policy will not extend beyond the West Bank and create a precedent for other territorial disputes.

He also plans to say that the decision does not mean the administration is prejudging the status of the West Bank in any eventual Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement.

The 1978 legal opinion on settlements is known as the Hansell Memorandum. It had been the basis for more than 40 years of carefully worded US opposition to settlement construction that had varied in its tone and strength depending on the given president’s position.

— AP