JERUSALEM/GAZA CITY: Israel and the US will set up a joint team to discuss Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday, days after talks with President Donald Trump.
During their talks on Wednesday in Washington, Netanyahu and Trump had “agreed to create joint teams to upgrade relations between Israel and the US in all of the main areas,” the premier said.
They will cover “security, intelligence, cyber, technology, economics and many others,” he told ministers and media at the start of Sunday’s weekly Cabinet meeting.
“We also agreed to create a team in an area that we have not previously agreed on: I mean, of course, on settlement in Judaea and Samaria,” he said, using a term Israel applies to the West Bank.
Hundreds of thousands of Jewish settlers live in the territory, which Israel has occupied since the Six-Day War of 1967.
The international community sees settlements as a major obstacle to peace, as they are built on land the Palestinians see as part of their future state.
At the White House meeting, their first since Trump took office, the president asked Netanyahu to “hold back on settlements for a little bit. We’ll work something out.”
During their joint White House news conference, Netanyahu said he believes that “the issue of the settlements is not the core of the conflict, nor does it really drive the conflict.”
“I think it’s an issue, it has to be resolved in the context of peace negotiations,” he said.
The administration of previous US President Barack Obama strongly opposed the expansion of Jewish settlements, arguing that they hurt the longer-term search for a two-state solution.
Since Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration, the Israeli premier has announced more than 5,000 settlement homes and the first entirely new settlement for more than 20 years.
Israel also passed a new law last week that legalizes dozens of Jewish outposts and thousands of settler homes built on private Palestinian land in the territory.
The EU has condemned the legislation, which UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said “is in contravention of international law.”
3 sentenced to death for ‘spying’
Hamas military courts in Gaza have sentenced three Palestinians to death for allegedly spying for Israel and upheld the sentences of three others.
Sunday’s verdicts raise the number of people on death row to 10, a number likely to increase since others are still appealing their death sentences. The courts have sentenced Gaza residents to death by hanging or shooting for convictions of murder or collaborating with Israel.
Human rights groups are concerned about the provision of fair trial standards under Hamas, an Islamic militant group which seized power in Gaza in 2007.
The Western-backed Palestinian Authority in the West Bank has issued a small number of death sentences over the years, but none have been approved by President Mahmoud Abbas or carried out.
0 comments: