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U.S. Policy on Israeli Settlements
(ICA-Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs) Dore Gold - Israeli settlements in the territories captured in the 1967 Six-Day War began as military and agricultural outposts located for the most part in strategically significant areas of the West Bank which Israel planned to eventually claim. These settlements were also situated in areas from which Jews had been evicted during the 1948 War. While the U.S. did not support the settlement enterprise, its response to the settlements has varied in intensity, depending on the overall relationship between the two countries. In the late 1960s, the Johnson administration was critical of Israeli settlement activity, but did not characterize the settlements as illegal. Eugene Rostow, a former dean of Yale Law School who was also Undersecretary of State in the Johnson years, would write years later that "Israel has an unassailable legal right to establish settlements in the West Bank." President Ronald Reagan declared that the settlements were "not illegal." He criticized them on policy grounds, calling them "ill-advised."