You are here

UN resolutions cannot be tweaked

Oct 01,2017 - Last updated at Oct 01,2017

The US State Department spokesperson had to clarify, for the second time in the span of a few months, comments made by the US ambassador to Israel, David Friedman.

The envoy, Donald Trump’s former bankruptcy lawyer, may have “accidentally” revealed the US administration’s thought when he told Israeli Walla news website on Thursday that he thinks Israeli settlements “are part of Israel”.

“I think that was always the expectation when Resolution 242 was adopted in 1967,” Friedman who, before being named ambassador, was president of an organisation that raised millions of dollars for projects in the West Bank settlement of Beit El, said.

He “thinks” too much. The resolution, adopted after the 1967 war, in which Israel captured the West Bank and other territories from its neighbours, calls for the withdrawal of Israeli troops from lands occupied during the conflict.

Before this statement, which proves the envoy’s deep, and dangerous, ignorance of facts — or perhaps he feigns ignorance to make statements that later spread and become “facts” — at the beginning of September, in an interview with the Jerusalem Post, Friedman had talked about Israel’s “alleged occupation” of the West Bank.

The US State Department again had to “clarify” the administration’s foreign policy, following the envoy’s alternative reality.

In the more recent case, the US State Department spokeswoman held a press briefing in which she said that the ambassador’s statement “should not be read as a way to prejudge the outcome of any negotiations that the US would have with the Israelis and the Palestinians. It should also not indicate a shift in US policy”.

Indeed.

It should, however, elicit some questioning of Friedman’s integrity, impartiality, knowledge of international law and his mandate as the representative of the superpower in such sensitive a place like Palestine.

One might not know what to make of Friedman’s statements, but we know that he was carefully chosen by President Trump despite, or maybe because of, his views and position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The only viable and credible disclaimer the Arab side would believe would be Trump making good on his commitment to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. 

 

Because solved it must be! It is unconscionable, for the US, for the world at large, to allow a people — the Palestinians — to live under military occupation as they have for half a century, dispossessed and discriminated against.

up
58 users have voted, including you.


Newsletter

Get top stories and blog posts emailed to you each day.

PDF