United States reverses it position on Israel

[Jitendra Hydonus]

White House reverses West Bank policy, calling Israeli settlements illegal
The decision was in response to reports that the far-right government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was planning further settlement expansion, an official said
BUENOS AIRES — Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced a reversal of the Trump administration’s position on Israeli settlements in the West Bank on Friday, saying they are “inconsistent with international law.”

“Our administration maintains firm opposition to settlement expansion,” Blinken told reporters at a news conference in Argentina. “In our judgment, this only weakens — it doesn’t strengthen — Israel’s security.”
The decision — which was also announced at the White House — was in immediate response to reports that the far-right government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was planning further settlement expansion, according to a U.S. official, one of several who discussed the decision on the condition of anonymity under administration rules.
Far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich announced plans late Thursday for approval of 3,000 new settlement homes after Israeli police said Palestinian gunmen opened fire near the existing Maale Adumim settlement, killing one Israeli and wounding five. The expansion plans, he said, were part of “deepening our eternal grip on the entire Land of Israel.”

“This is outrageous” after all the U.S. backing the Israeli government has received in the past several months, a former Biden official said. “For Smotrich to go and do this is just basically an F-you.”
U.S. officials said the decision to clarify Washington’s position on settlements had already been researched and planned as another in recent measures designed to express the administration’s growing discomfort with Israeli actions in Gaza and the West Bank — beginning with visa restrictions announced in December on settlers who used violence and undermined security in the West Bank.
In February, President Biden issued an executive order authorizing financial sanctions against four named settlers, followed a week later by a national security memorandum reminding recipients of U.S. weapons of the need to comply with U.S. and international law.

White House spokesman John Kirby, within minutes of Blinken’s remarks in Argentina, told reporters in Washington that the decision to declare settlements illegal put the Biden administration in harmony with previous U.S. administrations — with the exception of Trump’s.
“We are simply reaffirming the fundamental conclusion that these settlements are inconsistent with international law,” he said. “This is a position that has been consistent over a range of Republican and Democratic administrations — if there’s an administration that is being inconsistent, it was the previous one.”

The statement calling Israeli settlements on occupied territory illegal returns U.S. policy to where it had been since 1978, when a State Department legal opinion declared them “inconsistent with international law.” That opinion, issued under the Carter administration, said that “territory coming under control of a belligerent occupant does not thereby become its sovereign territory.”
At the time, there were an estimated 75 Israeli settlements in Gaza and the West Bank. Now, there are at least 146 settlements the Israeli government has authorized in the West Bank, not including East Jerusalem, along with 144 that are not officially recognized, according to Peace Now, an Israeli organization that advocates a two-state solution.
The 1978 policy was upheld under all subsequent administrations, although many preferred euphemisms such as saying settlements were an “obstacle to peace.” In 2005, Israel withdrew its settlements from Gaza.

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In 2019, however, Trump’s secretary of state, Mike Pompeo declared that the United States no longer considered settlements a violation of international law, although he never directed the issuing of a new legal opinion.

Under an unrealized Trump peace plan, Israel would have been allowed sovereignty over all existing settlements and permitted to annex up to 30 percent of the West Bank. During his 2020 presidential campaign, Biden said his policy would be grounded in his commitment to a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine but did not commit to reversing Trump’s actions, which included moving the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and recognizing Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights from Syria.
During his first visit to Israel as secretary of state in May 2021, Blinken said the Biden administration opposed “any steps” — including new settlements — that risked “sparking violence” or undermined “the prospect for returning to the pursuit of two states.” Much of the new construction undertaken and proposed by the Netanyahu government is the expansion of existing settlements.

In February last year, a joint statement issued by the United States, Palestinian, Israeli, Egyptian and Jordanian officials after a summit held in the Jordanian city of Aqaba said Israel pledged to “stop discussion of any new settlement units for four months and to stop authorization of any outposts for six months.”
Immediately afterward, however, Smotrich announced that “there won’t be a freeze on construction and development, not even for one day.”

Violence has grown exponentially on the West Bank, where there are now at least 700,000 Israeli settlers, since the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks in southern Israel that killed about 1,200 Israelis. That sparked Israel’s ongoing military operations in Gaza, where nearly 30,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to Gaza health authorities.

Since the start of the war, according to the United Nations, 399 Palestinians have been killed in conflict-related incidents across the West Bank and East Jerusalem, including 102 children, and 4,545 Palestinians have been injured, including 702 children.
During the same period, 13 Israelis, including four members of the Israeli military, were killed and 86 injured.

The Biden administration “tried very hard not to get into any of this,” calling settlements “unhelpful,” said Jeremy Ben-Ami, president of J-Street, a liberal policy group on Israeli-Palestinian issues. “The last 4½ months does go to show that this is not an issue you can ignore. It is going to explode if you don’t do something.”

DeYoung reported from Washington.
John Hudson is a reporter at The Washington Post covering the State Department and national security. He was part of the team that was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for coverage of the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. He has reported from dozens of countries, including Ukraine, China, Afghanistan, India and Belarus.
Karen DeYoung is associate editor and senior national security correspondent for The Post. In more than three decades at the paper, she has served as bureau chief in Latin America and in London and as correspondent covering the White House, U.S. foreign policy and the intelligence community.
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[Jitendra Hydonus]

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/X6pEl3gT574

[mccoy]

To make sure that We rebuild Gaza for the Palestinian people, not for the billionaires

Mr. Sanders here is so much into the wrong sphere of thought, so into it.... I feel some compassion for Senator Sanders and those like him, who have been sucked into this so wrong sphere of thought by the illusion of Satan and his legions of evil spirits.

IF Gaza is rebuilt with its people within, it will be rebuilt with the cruel demon-like terrorists of Hamas, one of the most vicious beings now on earth. And that with our money!

NO, I will never support financing with my money such demons coming from the deepest of hells.

Mr. Sanders and his followers are free to collect money and send it to Hamas. Hamas will use it to buy weapons, dig tunnels, make bombs, and missiles. Surely not to feed the Palestinians. But they'll like having the Palestinians around to use them as human shields.

Senator Sanders, please, open your eyes and try to have a glimpse on the right sphere of thought!

[Jitendra Hydonus]

To make sure that We rebuild Gaza for the Palestinian people, not for the billionaires

Mr. Sanders here is so much into the wrong sphere of thought, so into it.... I feel some compassion for Senator Sanders and those like him, who have been sucked into this so wrong sphere of thought by the illusion of Satan and his legions of evil spirits.

IF Gaza is rebuilt with its people within, it will be rebuilt with the cruel demon-like terrorists of Hamas, one of the most vicious beings now on earth. And that with our money!

NO, I will never support financing with my money such demons coming from the deepest of hells.

Mr. Sanders and his followers are free to collect money and send it to Hamas. Hamas will use it to buy weapons, dig tunnels, make bombs, and missiles. Surely not to feed the Palestinians. But they'll like having the Palestinians around to use them as human shields.

Senator Sanders, please, open your eyes and try to have a glimpse on the right sphere of thought!

If what you say is true; is it any wonder the Palestinians will use bombs and missiles? Wouldn’t you do the same if Israel came into your country and seized your property and home and left you homeless?

[mccoy]

If what you say is true; is it any wonder the Palestinians will use bombs and missiles? Wouldn’t you do the same if Israel came into your country and seized your property and home and left you homeless?

Steve, what I say is very true, I wish it weren't.

And we are not talking about using bombs and missiles against military targets. We are talking about deliberate cruel and extremely vicious murders and torture on civilians.

We are talking about babies taken hostages and strangled by these demons in human shape.

Now, to make a comparison, let's think about Russians and Ukrainians. The latter have been invaded and are fighting a righteous war. But if they started killing and torturing russian civilians and babies, they would be on the very wrong side of the karmic equation. They would become worse than the Russian offenders.

I don't know if the reset proposed by Mr. Trump will ever be realistic, but keeping financing Hamas would mean to perpetuate that kind of living hell on earth, a place where the rulers practice human sacrifice at the expense of their own people, not just the Israelis.

[Jitendra Hydonus]

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/X6pEl3gT574

On this issue i reserve opinion because i'm not in a position to have enough facts. This much i will say .. i'm
happy to hear that you think that the Ukrainians are fighting a righteous war.

The Indians in the United States fought a vicious war in the United States to keep their land but like Isreal the U.S. slaughtered the Indians, broke treaties and took their Indian homes and built their own settlements. The Indians like the Palastinians fought a guerella warfare because the Palastinians and Indians groups were highly out numbered in modern warfare equipment. As you have already heard Bernie Sanders said most of the people injured by the Israelies were women and children. Let us not forget that Bernie Sanders is himself a Jew. Whether by bombs or other means, most likely the Isralies killed many more civilians and children then the Palestineans ever even hoped to do , as you msy or may or may not know we attempted to stop Benjamin Netanyahu's relentless attacts on civilians who were even leaving the country for safety and refuge.

[mccoy]

Steve, you can trust me, this is not banter about Mr. Trump. Unfortunately, this is very dark stuff. I have seen videos. But the long video edited out of the bodycams of terrorists has not been made publicly available. I would not have watched it anyway. Some journalists have watched it and remained shocked.

Now, narratives describing it as a legitimate resistance action, they belong to the darkest and wrongest sphere of thought. Resistance, as I said above, is legitimate when military people and structure are targeted.

During those facts, there has been deliberate targeting of civilians to inflict terror, pain and humiliation and to take hostages. Also, among the targets there have been people who were publicly sympathetic with the Palestinian cause.

To be continued