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Could a Future U.S. Administration Undo the New Policy on Israeli Settlements?
(JNS-Israel Hayom) Israel Kasnett - Dore Gold, president of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, said that U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo "did a great service for Israel and for truth by stating that Israeli settlements in the West Bank are not illegal." Gold sent a letter to each of the 107 Congress members who expressed "strong disagreement" with the new policy, explaining why Pompeo's decision was correct. "I thought it was very important to put on the table the issue of the improper application of the Fourth Geneva Convention in the case of Israel," Gold said. What has bothered him, in particular, was that the idea that an occupying power cannot move its population into occupied territory came from the actions of Nazi Germany, which moved its Jewish population into places like Poland for purposes of extermination. "So somebody has the nerve to say that Israelis who have voluntarily moved into the West Bank are violating an international law that was based on a completely different situation?" he asked. "Comparing what Israel does in the West Bank to what Nazi Germany did in Poland to the Jews is something I find repulsive." Gold said it was important to send the letters because "if you don't say anything, it will continue." Pnina Sharvit-Baruch of the Institute for National Security Studies said it is necessary to move away from the arguments over who is right or wrong, and instead "find a solution on how to move forward." She said she fears that a future U.S. administration might return to the policy of saying settlements are illegal. "An argument can be made - and it is not baseless to say - that the settlements are not necessarily illegal," she said. "The case of why Palestinians have a right to this territory is not a clear-cut question. Even if they have the right of determination, there is still no clear-cut legal answer as to what territory this right applies to because the Green Line of 1967 is not a border." She said the main point is that the two sides previously agreed that the topic of settlements and borders is an issue that needs to be negotiated and that it is not supposed to be determined in court. By declaring the settlements a violation of international law, the Obama and Carter administrations were "very unhelpful" and "doing a disservice to any kind of peaceful settlement to the conflict."