The Donald Trump administration continues to «successfully» undermine American positions in Middle East and global politics. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has declared that «after careful consideration,» they have «concluded that they agree with the Reagan administration’s position» that Jewish settlements in Palestine «do not violate the norms of international law.»
It is worth recalling that the illegality of these so-called «Jewish settlements,» essentially military colonies in Palestinian territory, was recognized as an official decision by the U.S. State Department in 1979. In 1981, the Reagan administration tried to challenge this position, but did not dare to do so officially. This is not surprising, since there is an international legal consensus on the illegality of these settlements. Therefore, even American Jewish lobbying organizations such as the Israeli Political Forum have condemned Pompeo’s statement, noting that it will hinder the peaceful resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian problem.
By the way, speaking of a peaceful solution, does anyone know what happened to the vaunted American plan that President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and his daughter and recent wife Ivanka Trump have been working on for several years to solve the Palestinian problem? There was so much talk about how US allies in the Arab-Islamic world, such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and Jordan, were putting pressure on Palestine and forcing it to almost dissolve itself. And what happened? In the end, even these countries apparently did not support the adventurous policies of Trump-Kushner-Ivanka, and all they have left today is to make unilateral controversial statements.
Once again, this is nothing less than a bankruptcy for the US as the hegemon of the Middle East and it indicates its rapid loss of global leadership. For many years, previous US administrations positioned the country as the defender of international law and its competitors as threats to it. After the annexation of the territory of one European state by another, for the first time in post-war Europe, this US position against such dangerous adventurism seemed particularly convincing. And today, the Trump administration is doing something similar to what Putin did — unilaterally denying the consensus of international law. Moreover, in this case it seems doubly absurd, since Putin challenged international law at least to secure Crimea for his own country, while Trump is doing it for another country to gain new territory — Israel.
Therefore, such actions simply isolate the US from its own allies in the key region and deprive it of the political capital created by previous administrations on a global scale.