Trump Recognizes Israeli Communities

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The Trump administration announced this week that the United States will now recognize the legal status of Israeli communities in the West Bank, reversing a 41-year view that these civilian settlements are “inconsistent with international law.”

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that the new Trump policy repudiates the 1978 State Department legal opinion from the Carter administration known as the Hansell Memorandum. The memorandum suggested that Israeli settlements in Judea and Samaria were illegal, and every subsequent administration, Republican and Democrat alike, refused to act on it. In 1981, President Reagan disagreed with that conclusion and stated that he didn’t believe that the settlements were inherently illegal. However, during Obama’s final month in office in 2016, his administration chose to abstain, rather than veto, the resolution that condemned Israeli settlements as a “flagrant violation” of international law at the United Nations Security Council.

The Trump administration agrees with President Reagan that the establishment of Israeli civilian settlements in the West Bank is not inconsistent with international law. Pompeo stated that the Trump administration believes any legal questions about settlements should be resolved by Israeli courts and that declaring them a violation of international law distracts from larger efforts to negotiate a peace deal.

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