The Obama administration’s ambassador to Israel criticized the country’s resettlement policies in the West Bank on Monday, and questioned the country’s long-term intentions.
“First, for Israel, we are concerned and perplexed by Israel’s strategy on settlements,” Daniel Shapiro said Monday at the annual conference of the Institute for National Security Studies, an Israeli think tank.
“This government and previous Israeli governments have repeatedly expressed their support for a negotiated two-state solution — a solution that would involve both mutual recognition and separation,” he said, according to the Associated Press. “Yet separation will become more and more difficult if Israel plans to continue to expand the footprint of settlements.”
Echoing past words of Secretary of State John Kerry, Shapiro reiterated that the settlements “can never be an excuse for violence, never.”
“But continued settlement growth raises honest questions about Israel’s long-term intentions,” he said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded harshly to Shapiro’s comments, calling them inappropriate due to recent violence between Israelis and Palestinians.
“The ambassador’s comments, on a day when a mother of six is being buried and a pregnant woman is stabbed, are unacceptable and untrue,” Netanyahu said.
“Israel enforces the law on Israelis and Palestinians. The one responsible for the diplomatic stalemate is the Palestinian Authority, which continues to incite and refuses to negotiate.”
