In a recent interview with an Israeli journalist, Ambassador David Friedman stated forthrightly that “the settlements [on the West Bank] are part of Israel,” leading to an enraged reaction from the Palestinian Authority. The American media, for its part, accused Friedman of breaking with 25 years or more of U.S. policy; even the State Department rushed to distance itself from his remarks. But, writes Lee Smith, Friedman has it right:
Friedman’s comments do indeed reflect longstanding U.S. policy, which is rooted in UN Resolution 242, [passed shortly after the Six-Day War], whose carefully-worded language referring to a future peace based on Israeli withdrawal “from territories occupied” in the 1967 conflict in exchange for “secure and recognized borders”—meaning borders that were different from the prior 1967 lines—was drafted by the U.S. in the face of demands for an Israeli withdrawal from “the territories” or “all territories,” as suggested at various points by the British, the French, the Soviet Union, and various Arab states led by Egypt.
The point of the American insistence on not specifying the extent of a future Israeli withdrawal, as Friedman explained in the interview last week, was that “Israel would be entitled to secure borders. The existing borders, the 1967 borders, were viewed by everybody as not secure. So Israel would retain a meaningful portion of the West Bank—and it would return that which it didn’t need for . . . peace and security.”
Again, Friedman is clearly correct. Israel’s occupation of the West Bank was never defined as illegal by the UN, nor is there any obligation for Israel to withdraw from the territories in the absence of a comprehensive peace with the Arab states (the Palestinians are never mentioned in Resolution 242). . . .
So why are the PA, the U.S. press, and [the State Department] portraying Friedman’s remarks as a shocking departure from longstanding U.S. policy? Because the Obama administration attempted to reverse that policy, while pretending otherwise.
Read more on Tablet: http://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/246420/ambassador-david-friedman-accurately-described-longstanding-us-policy-towards-west-bank-settlements-so-why-is-everyone-mad