Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he has held phone talks with US President Donald Trump discussing the decision of the US administration to no longer consider Israeli settlement activity to be illegal.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced at a press briefing on Monday that the “establishment of Israeli civilian settlements in the West Bank is not per se inconsistent with international law.”
“I spoke on the phone with US President Donald Trump and told him that he had corrected a historic injustice,” Netanyahu said on Twitter, adding in another post that “this [the change in US policy] does not prevent negotiations … On the contrary, it advances peace because it is not possible to build true peace based on lies.”
The Israeli prime minister emphasized that the West Bank was not a “foreign land” to Israelis.
“This is our homeland for over 3,000 years. The reason that we are called ‘Jews’ is because we came from here, from Judea,” Netanyahu wrote on Twitter.
Meanwhile, Secretary General of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) Saeb Erekat said in a Monday statement that the change in the US stance on Israeli settlement activity threatens global stability. Erekat emphasized that under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, Israel’s settlements activity in the occupied territories “falls within the definition of war crimes.”
The PLO secretary general called on the international community to deter “irresponsible US behavior” and said that the “only way towards achieving peace in Palestine, Israel, and the entire Middle East is with the freedom and independence of the State of Palestine on the 1967 border with East Jerusalem as its capital.”
On his part, Netanyahu said on Twitter that Trump was right when he decided to move the US embassy to Jerusalem.
High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Federica Mogherini said in a Monday statement that the European Union still considered all Israeli settlements in the West Bank illegal, despite the change in the stance of the current US administration.
She added that the European Union was calling on Israel to end all settlement activity and start negotiating a two-state solution.
(UNI)
