US Speaker of the House Mike Johnson blasted the Biden administration’s decision to restore a longstanding policy that considers settlements inconsistent with international law after it had been altered by the previous administration.
“The Jewish people have a historic and legal right to live in the land of Israel including in Judea and Samaria – the Biblical heartland,” the Republican speaker writes on X.
“It is an absolute disgrace the Biden administration would issue this decision, especially as Israel fights terrorists on multiple fronts that seek Israel’s destruction and as more than 130 hostages remain in Gaza,” he continued. “The Biden Administration must stop undermining Israel and facilitating efforts to delegitimize Israel. It is misguided and unconscionable.”
Speaking about the decision on Friday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken recalled that the policy had been in place under Republican and Democratic administrations alike until it was overturned by former president Donald Trump’s secretary of state Mike Pompeo in 2019.
“It’s been longstanding US policy under Republican and Democratic administrations alike that new settlements are counterproductive to reaching an enduring peace,” Blinken said on Friday.
“They’re also inconsistent with international law,” he continued, effectively revoking what became known as the “Pompeo doctrine,” which deemed settlements “not per se inconsistent with international law.”
The 2019 policy implemented by Pompeo overturned a 1978 memo by State Department legal adviser Herbert Hansell, which characterized settlements as illegal.
Washington restored that policy on Friday hours after Israel announced a plan to advance the construction of thousands of new settlement homes in response to a terror shooting in the West Bank.
“We’ve seen the reports and I have to say we’re disappointed in the announcement,” Blinken said in response to a question on the matter during a press conference in Argentina.
“Our administration maintains firm opposition to settlement expansion and in our judgment, this only weakens — doesn’t strengthen — Israel’s security,” Blinken added.
Elaborating on the decision during his own press conference, White House National Security Adviser John Kirby said, “We are simply reaffirming the fundamental conclusion that these settlements are inconsistent with international law… this is a position that has been consistent over a range of Republican and Democratic administrations.”
“If there’s an administration that is being inconsistent, it was the previous one,” Kirby said of the Trump administration.
The criticism was echoed by the UK’s Ambassador to Israel Simon Walters, who tweeted, “Settlements are illegal under international law and make it harder still to progress towards a solution of this conflict.”
Despite pressure from progressive pro-Israel organizations, the Biden administration had held off for over three years in revoking the Pompeo doctrine, as it avoided moves seen as overly confrontational with Jerusalem.
But the swift nature in which the US moved with Friday’s announcement highlighted Washington’s ever-shrinking patience with Israel’s policy in the West Bank, as the administration continues to come under fire from progressives at home and many allies abroad over its broad support for Israel in the war against Hamas, triggered by the terror group’s October 7 massacre.
Late Thursday, hours after a deadly terror shooting near the Ma’ale Adumim settlement, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich announced that Israel will advance plans for the construction of more than 3,000 settlement homes in response to the attack in which three Palestinian gunmen opened fire near a checkpoint between Jerusalem and Ma’ale Adumim, killing an Israeli man and wounding 11 others.
Smotrich said in a statement that the decision to advance plans for 2,350 new housing units in Ma’ale Adumim, 300 in Keidar and 694 in Efrat was made during a meeting he held with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer. It was the latest demonstration of the influence that the far-right minister holds in Netanyahu’s government, as the premier continues to rely on the support of his Orthodox coalition partners to remain in power.
“May every terrorist planning to harm us know that lifting a finger against Israeli citizens will be met with a death blow and destruction in addition to the deepening of our eternal grip on the entire Land of Israel,” Smotrich said, calling the decision “an appropriate Zionist response.”
In what may have been an attempt to soften the response from Washington, the three settlements that the top Israeli ministers earmarked for construction — Ma’ale Adumim, Efrat and Keidar — are all located west of the West Bank security barrier, in areas perceived to enjoy more consensus Israeli support, as opposed to more isolated settlements dozens of kilometers east of the Green Line.