President Trump does not have an “official position” on Israeli settlement construction, his spokesman announced in a break with decades of U.S. policy.
“The Trump administration has not taken an official position on settlement activity and looks forward to continuing discussions, including with Prime Minister Netanyahu when he visits with President Trump later this month,” White House press secretary Sean Spicer said in a Thursday evening statement.
Every American president since Lyndon Johnson has opposed Israeli settlement construction in territory disputed by the Palestinian Authority. The issue reached a political tipping point in December, however, when then-President Barack Obama declined to veto a United Nations Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlement construction as a threat to the prospects of a negotiated peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
Congressional Republicans condemned the resolution as an unfair abuse of Israel, but Trump’s spokesman went farther by questioning whether Israeli settlements impede a two-state solution in the Middle East. “While we don’t believe the existence of settlements is an impediment to peace, the construction of new settlements or the expansion of existing settlements beyond their current borders may not be helpful in achieving that goal,” Spicer said.
That statement changed U.S. policy in two ways. The assessment that the existence of settlements is not an impediment is a stark contradiction of the Obama administration’s view and it should pay dividends with Netanyahu and pro-Israel advocates.
“This statement is a dramatic break from the Obama administration’s policy of looking for any reason to beat up Israel, and a return to a foreign policy of treating allies like allies,” as a senior official from a national pro-israel organization put it.
“The Trump team is finding its voice on Israel, and they’re making it clear no one is going to speak for this administration except this administration. They are out to repair the U.S.-Israel relationship, and they want to make sure people understand that’s what is going to happen.”
Spicer broke with the Obama administration again by expressing doubt that the expansion of settlements could undermine the two-state solution. Kerry, for his part, accused Israeli settlers of making tactical decisions to build outposts that would hamper the formation of a contiguous Palestinian state.
“If more and more settlers are moving into the middle of Palestinian areas, it’s going to be just that much harder to separate, that much harder to imagine transferring sovereignty, and that is exactly the outcome that some are purposefully accelerating,” Kerry said days after the UN resolution passed. “They’re often located on private Palestinian land and strategically placed in locations that make two states impossible.”
Spicer’s statement is also in tension with remarks by Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, who backed a freeze of settlement construction during her confirmation hearing. But she also called Obama’s abstention from vetoing the UN resolution “a kick in the gut” to Israel and the broader field of U.S. allies.
“And so we can think what we want to think on settlements, but you have to think that the U.S. abstention … was wrong,” Haley told the Senate panel.
