Analyst:

Trump, some senior US officials ‘vehemently anti-Palestinian’

Rasa - US President Donald Trump and some members of his administration are strongly anti-Palestinian and are pursuing a dangerous policy of moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem al-Quds, an analyst in California says.

News ID: 428503

Date: 29 March 2017 - 20:36

RNA - Trump and several senior US officials are “vehemently anti-Palestinian and against the Palestinian cause and the Palestinian people,” said Richard Becker, a member of the ANSWER Coalition, a protest umbrella group consisting of many antiwar and civil rights organizations.

Moving the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem al-Quds is “truly playing with fire,” Becker told Press TV on Tuesday.

“It would provoke a great response throughout the Arab and Muslim world and among people all over the world who will see this as another step in Israel’s annexationist policy toward all of Palestine,” he added.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu thanked the Trump administration on Monday for its support of the Tel Aviv regime.

Netanyahu also thanked the White House over its choice for Washington’s new ambassador to Israel, while addressing the annual American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) convention in Washington via video link.

Trump skipped the AIPAC conference, amid reports of some differences between Washington and Tel Aviv on policy matters, a report says.

Trump dispatched US Vice President Mike Pence and UN Ambassador Nikki Haley to speak to the powerful pro-Israel lobbying group in his place, The New York Times reported on Monday.

The Trump administration, the newspaper reported, is pressing Netanyahu for a so-called peace deal with Palestinians that would halt the construction of illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank, but Netanyahu is refusing to stop the settlement activity.

Every US president since Jimmy Carter has taken the position that Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territories are "illegitimate" under international law.

Israel is the largest cumulative recipient of US foreign assistance since World War II. America's military assistance to Israel has amounted to $124.3 billion since it began in 1962, according to a US congressional report last year.

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