After giving green light to sovereignty over settlements following rollout of Trump peace plan, ambassador says rash move would ‘endanger’ plan
US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman on Sunday said that any “unilateral” Israeli decision to annex parts of the West Bank would endanger Washington’s Middle East peace plan, unveiled last month, reversing his previous stance on the matter.
Minutes after US President Donald Trump revealed details of the long-awaited plan on January 28, Friedman briefed reporters and told them “Israel does not have to wait at all” when asked whether there was a “waiting period” that would have to elapse before the country could extend sovereignty to the Jordan Valley and settlements.
“The waiting period would be the time it takes for them to obtain internal approvals and to obviously create the documentation, the calibration, the mapping, that would enable us to evaluate it, makes sure it’s consistent with the conceptual map,” he added at the time. “If they wish to apply Israeli law to those areas allocated to Israel, we will recognize it.”
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However, Trump’s senior adviser Jared Kushner has since said the United States would not support an annexation before the March 2 Knesset elections, and that work on the move by a joint team would take at least two months. Netanyahu has subsequently nixed plans to immediately go ahead with the step.
On Sunday, Friedman realigned himself with the administration’s updated stance.
“President Trump’s Vision for Peace is the product of more than three years of close consultations among the President, PM Netanyahu and their respective senior staff,” he tweeted.
“As we have stated, the application of Israeli law to the territory which the Plan provides to be part of Israel is subject to the completion a mapping process by a joint Israeli-American committee,” he added. “Any unilateral action in advance of the completion of the committee process endangers the Plan & American recognition.”
Prominent settler leader Oded Revivi, the head of the Efrat local council, reacted by calling Friedman’s statement a “wake-up call for all of us,” and urged fellow settler leaders to cooperation with the government on the subject.
Revivi said it was “wrong” for Israel to take unilateral action at this time, adding that “Ambassador Friedman, in the name of the US administration, is presenting a rare opportunity to sit down with the Americans and hold discussions through an elected government to determine Israel’s future borders.”
“When we are dealing with such an important topic, the international support the US can create is important,” Revivi said. “I call on my fellow settlement leaders to create a joint mechanism to work with the prime minister so that we come to the Americans with a united front and when we know what we want to achieve.”
Immediately after Trump announced the release of his Israeli-Palestinian peace proposal during a White House ceremony attended by Netanyahu, the premier told reporters he planned to bring his plan to annex the Jordan Valley and West Bank settlements for cabinet approval within days.
Since backing off from his initial pledge, Netanyahu has refrained from giving a timeline for annexation, but at a campaign event Tuesday he urged attendees to help him get reelected, saying that a victory would allow his Likud party to gain approval for the Trump peace plan.
Those remarks appeared to be an acknowledgement that annexation would not be on the table before the national vote.
Nonetheless, Netanyahu reportedly told settler leaders Thursday he was still working on some degree of annexation before the elections, according to participants in the meeting.
Agencies contributed to this report.
Content retrieved from: https://www.timesofisrael.com/in-u-turn-us-envoy-friedman-cautions-israel-against-unilateral-annexation/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter.