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Legal Expert: U.S. Announcement on Israeli Settlements Does Not Close Door on Peace
(JNS) Jackson Richman - Prof. Eugene Kontorovich, director of the Center for International Law in the Middle East at George Mason University, said the 1978 State Department legal opinion on Israeli settlements issued during the Carter Administration, known as the Hansell Memorandum, was "legally inaccurate and long-outdated." "The international-law arguments against settlements...do not reflect international law in practice, but rather a desire to put nice words on the argument that Jews should be banned from living in their homeland. Secretary Pompeo has torn the veil off these arguments." "The U.S. now correctly takes the position that Israel is not an occupying power in the West Bank, and Jews living in Judea and Samaria is not a war crime. This does not close the door to a two-state solution. It does mean the negotiations about such a solution will no longer begin from the premise that Israel has no claim to this land or stole it from the Palestinians. That false legal theory only served to harden Palestinian positions and make successful negotiations impossible.