Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman on Thursday called again on Trump to coordinate with the Israeli government in order to “enable the development of settlements.”
According to Israeli media outlet Ynet, Lieberman called on Trump’s new administration to work with the Israeli government to form a relationship that “will enable development in the settlements.”
“I ask myself why we didn’t succeed in developing the settlement enterprise as we wanted. The fundamental reason is simple: it is the failure to coordinate with the United States, the failure to create a coordinated policy with the American administration,” Lieberman was quoted as saying in Ynet.
Avigdor Lieberman Wants Deal With Trump To Expand Big West Bank Settlements https://t.co/SZkNeREWp8 via @jdforward
— صمود Ziomythologist (@Aer_O_Head) November 17, 2016
Last week, the Washington Post reported that one of Trump’s top advisers Jason Greenblatt said during an interview with Israeli army radio that Trump did not believe settlements were an obstacle to peace, breaking off from his American predecessors and the entirety of the international community.
During his campaign back in May, Trump told the UK’s Daily Mail that he would support the continued expansion of illegal Israeli settlements in Palestinian territory, saying that the practice should “keep moving forward.”
On Wednesday, the Israeli parliament, Knesset approved a preliminary reading of a controversial “formalization bill” which would notably retroactively legalize hundreds of Israeli settler outposts constructed on private Palestinian land, considered illegal under Israeli domestic law.
While the settler outposts constructed in Palestinian territory are considered illegal by the Israeli government — despite authorities commonly retroactively legalizing the outposts — each of the some 196 government-approved Israeli settlements scattered across the West Bank are also constructed in direct violation of international law.
(Ma’an, PC, Social Media)
