Washington is in opposition to Israeli settlement expansions within the Palestinian territories, the U.S. envoy stated Wednesday.
Speaking to the Israeli public broadcaster KAN, ambassador Tom Nides stated Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is aware of that the Biden administration’s stance is in favor of preserving the “vision of a two-state solution alive.”
The U.S. administration additionally opposes “legalizing [Israeli] outposts and massive settlement expansion” of settlements throughout the occupied West Bank, he added.
The U.S. diplomat denied boycotting any members of the brand new Israeli authorities amid reviews that he refuses to contact far-right Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir over his radical views on the Palestinians.
“We are going to work with the Israeli government, its democratically elected government,” Nides stated.
Last week, Ben-Gvir’s go to to the flashpoint Al-Aqsa Mosque complicated in occupied East Jerusalem triggered a storm of condemnations from international locations the world over, together with Jordan, Türkiye, the U.S., Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Pakistan.
The U.S. ambassador stated that Netanyahu’s authorities declared that it’s going to protect the established order in Jerusalem’s holy websites.
Palestinians accuse Israel of systematically working to Judaize East Jerusalem, the place Al-Aqsa is positioned, and to obliterate its Arab and Islamic identification.
For Muslims, Al-Aqsa represents the world’s third-holiest web site. Jews, for his or her half, name the world the Temple Mount, saying it was the location of two Jewish temples in historical instances.
Israel occupied East Jerusalem through the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. It annexed your complete metropolis in 1980, in a transfer by no means acknowledged by the worldwide group.
Under worldwide regulation, all Jewish settlements in occupied territories are thought-about unlawful.
