Biden must stop unlawful Israeli settlements—former ambassador

(RT) ⸻ The administration of US President Joe Biden should remind Israel that its ongoing settlement of the West Bank violates a deal it struck with Washington in 2004, former US ambassador to the country Daniel Kurtzer said on Thursday. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu granted retroactive authorization to nine settlements in the occupied West Bank earlier this month, and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich stated that 10,000 homes for Jewish settlers would be built in these locations. This is a violation of a commitment that the Israeli government made in writing to the American government back in 2004, when Ariel Sharon promised to demolish any unauthorized Jewish settlements in the West Bank. Israeli outposts began going up again under Netanyahu in 2012, and 132 are now officially sanctioned by the Israeli government. Netanyahu granted Smotrich control over civilian issues in the West Bank on Thursday, giving the hardline Zionist minister authority over planning, construction, and land allocation. Smotrich's first act was to authorize plans for more than 7,000 new homes, some of which are located in outposts that have not been formally legalized yet. Critics of Israel's settlement policy argue that by chipping away at Palestinian land, the government is lowering the chances of reaching a two-state solution with the Palestinian Authority. Kurtzer called the settlement process a "creeping annexation" of the West Bank, and declared that if Israel is still interested in a peace process, it must stop a number of actions that it's taking.