WASHINGTON - The Biden administration reversed one of Donald Trump's farthest-reaching moves toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, overturning his policy that the U.S. no longer views Israeli settlements in the West Bank as illegal.
"It's been longstanding U.S. policy under Republican and Democratic administrations alike that new settlements are counterproductive to reaching an enduring peace. They're also inconsistent with international law," said U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken as he discussed his "disappointment" over Israel's announcement of new West Bank settlement construction.
Informally known as the Pompeo Doctrine, the policy stated that Israeli settlementswere "not per se inconsistent with international law." The change overturned a 1978 memo by State Department legal adviser Herbert Hansell that had deemed Israeli settlements beyond the 1949 armistice lines illegal.
The policy was instituted by Trump a month before the 2020 presidential election. It was formulated by the Kohelet Policy Forum – the right-wing Israeli think tank behind Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's controversial judicial overhaul efforts.
Since President Joe Biden took office in 2021, the political left has pushed Washington to reverse Trump's move as an initial but decisive step toward restoring long-held norms regarding the conflict.
U.S. officials have mulled reversing the Pompeo Doctrine as a punitive measure on top of Biden's executive order clearing the path toward sanctions on settlers endangering the stability of the West Bank. They have also mulled further sanctions, as well as reversing the order to label settlement-made products as "product of Israel."
National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said the new decision "[wasn't] about the previous administration" but that the Biden administration was "simply reaffirming the fundamental conclusion that these settlements are inconsistent with international law.
"This has been consistent over a range of Republican and Democratic administrations," he added. "If there was an administration that was inconsistent, it was the previous one."
"Judea and Samaria are rightful parts of the Jewish homeland, and Israelis have a right to live there," Pompeo said following
Blinken's remarks. He added that the decision "rewards Hamas for its brutal attacks on October 7 and punishes Israel instead. These Israeli communities are not standing in the way of peace;
militant Palestinian terrorism is."
David Friedman, who was U.S. ambassador to Israel at the time of Pompeo's move, said: "Blinken is 100% wrong. I researched this for over a year with many State Department lawyers. There is nothing illegal about Jews living in their biblical homeland" Friedman added that "for Blinken to announce this in the middle of a war and when the Jewish Sabbath already has begun in Israel is unconscionable."