The United States plans to cut off funds for West Bank research conducted by Israeli colleges.
The illegal Israeli occupation of the West Bank is no longer recognized as a fact by the United States under the administration of President Joe Biden.
On Monday, the United States took another step away from legitimizing Israel’s occupation of the West Bank by announcing it will no longer sponsor scientific research with Israeli university institutions in the occupied territory.
It is a reversal of a decision taken by Donald Trump’s administration, which had rejected the widespread international agreement that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, which it captured in the 1967 Six-Day War, is unlawful. Joe Biden was the vice president at the time.
A new State Department directive states that “engaging in bilateral scientific and technological cooperation with Israel in geographic areas which came under the administration of Israel after 1967 and which remain subject to final-status negotiations is inconsistent with US foreign policy,” according to State Department spokesman Matthew Miller.
He emphasised that the United States “strongly values scientific and technological cooperation with Israel” and that the ban on funding in the West Bank “is reflective of the long-standing US position going back decades.”
Ariel University, a prominent educational institution established in 1982 in what was then a new settlement in the West Bank, would feel the most direct impact of the decision.
The judgement was immediately criticised by Republicans, members of the opposing party.
Senator Ted Cruz, who has been vocal in his criticism of Vice President Joe Biden, has blasted the government for its “anti-Semitic discrimination” against Jews in the West Bank, calling it “pathologically obsessed with undermining Israel.”
Biden’s government was accused of supporting the activist campaign to boycott Israel by Trump’s ambassador to Israel and supporter of Ariel University, David Friedman.
The government, however, has stated its opposition to the BDS movement, which seeks to cut all connections with Israel rather than simply the settlements.
Washington normalised Israeli settlements in the West Bank under Trump’s secretary of state Mike Pompeo, allowing their products to be labelled as “made in Israel.”
The United States’ position of supporting for a two-state solution with the Palestinians and criticising settlement development under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been revived by the Biden administration.
With Netanyahu at the helm of the most right-wing government in Israeli history, Washington has refrained from making any serious attempts to negotiate a peace deal.
