Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he has made clear to US President Donald Trump that he will not evacuate “a single person” from settlements in the occupied West Bank. RNA - “I said there can’t be the removal of even one settlement, and [that Israel insists on] our continued control of all the territory to the west of the Jordan,” Netanyahu told Israel's Channel 13 news network.
The Israeli premier said he had set out the same position to Trump and former US president Barack Obama, stressing that he was unwilling to see even a single Israeli being evacuated from the West Bank settlements.
“All the settlements, without exception, those that are in blocs and those that aren’t, need to remain under Israeli sovereignty,” Netanyahu claimed, adding that the plan would “eventually” happen.
Asked in the interview whether he expects Washington to recognize the Israeli claim on the West Bank as Trump did with the Golan Heights last month, Netanyahu said, "Wait until the next term."
The US president will likely unveil his controversial proposal on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the so-called “deal of the century”, on May 15.
Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner has made regional tours over the past two years to secretly win support for the plan.
Israel occupied the West Bank as well as East Jerusalem al-Quds during the Six-Day War in 1967. It later annexed the Palestinian city in a move not recognized by the international community.
Israel lays claim to the whole city, but the Palestinians view its eastern sector as the capital of their future sovereign state.
The prospect of peace between Israelis and Palestinians was dealt a major blow in December 2017, when Trump recognized Jerusalem al-Quds as the “capital” of Israel.
He also moved the American embassy from Tel Aviv to the occupied city on May 14, 2018, in what appeared to be an intentional coincidence with the 70th anniversary of Nakba Day. The occasion marks the expulsion by Israel of Palestinians from their motherland.
Palestinians have already rejected Trump’s yet-to-be-unveiled plan, with President Mahmoud Abbas calling it “the slap of the century.”
About 600,000 Israelis live in over 230 illegal settlements built since the 1967 Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and East Jerusalem al-Quds.
Palestinians want the West Bank as part of a future independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem al-Quds as its capital.
The last round of Israeli-Palestinian talks collapsed in 2014. Among the major sticking points in those negotiations was Israel’s continued settlement expansion on Palestinian territories.
'Israel almost identical to Daesh'
On Friday, a Columbia University professor wrote on his Facebook page that the only difference between Israel and the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group was that Zionist columnists defended the regime's “terrorist cause.”
The “murderous thugs” of the terrorist outfit “conquered parts of Syria and declared a ‘caliphate,’” wrote Hamid Dabashi, professor in the university’s Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies.
“Their ISRAELI counterparts meanwhile conquered parts of Syria and declared it part of their Zionist settler colony.”
He added, “The only difference: ISIS (Daesh) does not have a platoon of clean shaven and well coiffured columnists at the New York Times propagating the cause of the terrorist outfit as the Zionists columnists do on a regular basis.”
Syria has been gripped by foreign-backed militancy since March 2011. The Syrian government says the Israeli regime and its Western and regional allies are aiding Takfiri terrorist groups wreaking havoc on the country.
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