Settlements ‘contrary’ to international law: Germany
Germany has condemned the latest Israeli plans to construct thousands of new settler homes in the occupied West Bank. “You know our position on settlement construction. It is contrary to international law and this also applies when new construction projects are carried out,” deputy Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Kathrin Deschauer told a news conference in Berlin.
Israel will advance plans for the construction of more than 3,000 settlement homes, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich announced late Thursday night.
Blinken says US ‘disappointed’ in announcement of new Israeli settlements
US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has just finished speaking at a news conference in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Here is what he said on Israel’s announcement on Thursday of building new settlements in the occupied West Bank:
"We are disappointed … it has been longstanding US policy under Republican and Democratic administrations alike, that new settlements are counterproductive to reaching an enduring peace. They are also inconsistent with international law."
Our administration maintains a firm opposition to settlement expansion. In our judgement, it only weakens, doesn’t strengthen Israel’s security.
Blinken says territory of Gaza should not be reduced
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has reiterated the Biden administration’s opposition to an Israeli “reoccupation” of Gaza and that the strip should not see its territory reduced after the war. The UN considered Gaza occupied by Israel before the war, due to Israel’s yearslong siege of the territory.
The Israeli government has said that it will maintain military control of the strip after the war and has already destroyed large swaths of the territory near the boundary with Israel for an apparent “buffer zone”, demolishing many buildings and reducing the territory of Gaza.
The US has not announced any steps to pressure Israel over such actions, despite the fact that they run counter to US calls and that experts have said they could constitute war crimes. “Gaza … cannot be a platform for terrorism. There should be no Israeli reoccupation of Gaza. The size of Gaza territory should not be reduced,” Blinken said in Buenos Aires, where he is attending a G20 meeting of foreign ministers.
What is the ‘Pompeo Doctrine’ the Biden administration just scrapped?
https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/18/politics/pompeo-west-bank-settlements-announcement/index.html
https://thehill.com/policy/international/4485259-us-reverses-trump-policy-israeli-settlements/
The Biden administration has reversed the “Pompeo Doctrine”, a Trump-era policy that declined to say that Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories are illegal under international law.
While the US has historically done little to pressure Israel to halt or roll back settlement expansion, the move by the Trump administration, named for firmly pro-Israel Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, symbolically reversed several decades of US policy, which acknowledged the illegality of such settlements.
In remarks today, current Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Israeli settlements are a hindrance to peace and “inconsistent with international law”. The US official made no mention of tangible consequences Israel could face for new settlement construction, as it announced in plans earlier today. The current administration also took more than three years to scrap the doctrine, voicing opposition to a proposed UN resolution declaring Israeli settlements illegal last year.
While the Biden administration has sought to distinguish itself from the Trump administration, it has kept the policies of the previous White House largely in place, keeping the US embassy in Jerusalem and placing normalisation deals between Israel and Arab states at the centre of its Middle East policy.
The administration recently announced an executive order applying sanctions to Israeli settlers who take part in violent attacks against Palestinians, but the scope of those efforts remains to be seen and have thus far been limited to a small handful of people. (4 to be exact)
Biden is terrible but Trump only poured gas on the fire while giving Netanyahu everything he wants.
All three use blustering, nationalistic slogans and platitudes to portray strength. All three promote legal amendments to fortify their power. Diligently try to abolish or severely impair checks and balances, and weaken the judiciary. All three, in different forms, intimidate political rivals with vitriol, implicit and explicit threats. All three also created a worshipping cult around them and surrounded themselves with incoherent sycophants in their respective parliaments, who avidly help spread the poison.
But their most important and frequently used tactic is attrition. To tire and depress the public into submission and resignation. Through an endless campaign of lies, conspiracy theories, false information and alternative interpretations of reality, they rely on the majority of the public to get confused, disbelieve everything, doubt all the facts.
Some of this is a matter of character. A lot of it is a tool set to increase and perpetuate power. And then there's a deeper ideological dimension. Umberto Eco's famous 1995 essay "Ur-Fascism" lists 14 features or tenets of fascism. Nine of them wholly apply to the "three amigos":
- Cult of tradition: This is strongest with Putin's czarist nostalgia and Mother Russia references, but is also at the heart of Trump's "Make America Great Again" branding and Netanyahu's messianic vision of Israel.
- Rejection of modernism: All three see liberty, reason, science and the concept of doubt/questioning as dangers.
- Disagreement is treason: Naturally. Their ideology is: I am the embodiment of patriotism, only I define what patriotism is. Those who disagree don't understand the dangers and are ingrates who fail to see my historical grandeur.
- Appeal to social frustration: Immigrants, intellectuals and dissenters from the outside, and Mexicans, Ukrainians and Arabs from the inside, are taking over our country, polluting our culture and changing our beloved country.
- Obsession with a plot: Conspiracy theories and plots are everywhere. Everyone is out to get them, there are vile external forces at work, the deep state is conniving against them.
- The enemy is both strong and weak: Ukraine is a threat, Iran is a threat, China is a threat. All three are existential threats, but we can deal with them because they are weak.
- Machismo and weaponry: Goes without saying.
- Selective populism: They each purport to represent the voice of the real people against treacherous elites.
- Newspeak: Black is white, day is night, truth is false, lies are an alternative truth, there are facts and alternative facts.
