The US Department of State clarified that it considers the West Bank to be territory occupied by Israel.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is a historical fact that Israel occupied the West Bank, Gaza, and the Golan Heights after the 1967 war,\u201d US State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn fact, the 2020 Human Rights Report does use the term \u201coccupation\u201d in the context of the current status of the West Bank. This has been the longstanding position of previous administrations of both parties over the course of many decades,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Price made his statements in response to a question on why the US State Department held off on using the term \u201coccupied territories\u201d in the annual Human Rights Report, the first of the annual reports released since US President Joe Biden took office in January 2021, and whether this indicates \u201ca type of permanent change in policy\u201d and a \u201ccontinuation of the policy under the Trump administration\u201d.<\/p>\n
While Price affirmed that the West Bank is an occupied territory, he evaded a question on whether the administration held that Israeli colonial settlements were illegal.<\/p>\n
The 2020 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices kept in place a change former US President Donald Trump had introduced to the report, in which he replaced the phrase \u201cIsrael and the occupied Palestinian Territories\u201d with \u201cIsrael, the West Bank and Gaza.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis section of the report covers Israel within the 1949 Armistice Agreement line as well as Golan Heights and East Jerusalem territories that Israel occupied during the June 1967 war and where it later extended its domestic law, jurisdiction, and administration.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe United States recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel in 2017 and Israel\u2019s sovereignty over the Golan Heights in 2019. Language in this report is not meant to convey a position on any final status issues to be negotiated between the parties to the conflict, including the specific boundaries of Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem, or the borders between Israel and any future Palestinian state.\u201d<\/p>\n
Egypt Today<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The US Department of State clarified that it considers the West Bank to be territory occupied by Israel. \u201cIt is a historical fact that Israel occupied the West Bank, Gaza, and the Golan Heights after the 1967 war,\u201d US State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters. \u201cIn fact, the 2020 Human Rights Report does use […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40,"featured_media":222348,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7863],"tags":[2484,11705,46794,15407,8596,56494],"class_list":["post-222347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-english-section","tag-egypt","tag-gaza","tag-golan","tag-israel","tag-us","tag-west-bank"],"yoast_head":"\n