Jordan has accused the US of entrenching the Israeli

occupation of the Palestinian territories, after

Washington announced it did not consider Jewish settlements
in the occupied West Bank to necessarily be illegal.
Ayman Safadi, the Jordanian foreign minister, criticised the
US decision, saying settlements “kill the two-state solution”,
the most widely accepted blueprint for Middle East peace.
“Entrenching the occupation and its injustice, and violating
the resolutions of international legitimacy will not achieve
peace, and will not guarantee security and stability,” he said,
according to state media.“Nothing changes the illegal reality
of settlements that the international community is unanimous
in condemning,” he added.
In a dramatic break with decades of international law and
global consensus, the US secretary of state, Mike
Pompeo, made the announcement on Monday.
He said arguments about who was right and who was wrong
as a matter of international law were counterproductive to any
future agreement between Israelis and Palestinians. Pompeo
even suggested the move would “provide the very space for
Israelis and Palestinians to come together to find a political
solution”.
“Calling the establishment of civilian settlements inconsistent
with international law has not advanced the cause of peace,”
Pompeo said.
Palestinians, their allies, rights groups and international law
analysts disagreed, stating that the establishment of
settlements on occupied land was a war crime.
The European Union’s foreign policy chief, Federica
Mogherini, said the EU policy on Israeli settlements “is clear
and remains unchanged: all settlement activity is illegal under
international law and it erodes the viability of the two-state
solution and the prospects for a lasting peace”.
The move is a political boost for Benjamin Netanyahu at a
precarious time for him. The 70-year-old prime minister is
fighting for his political survival as Israel prime minister while
his opponent, Benny Gantz, is trying to assemble a coalition
government. Pompeo said the timing of the announcement
was “not tied to domestic politics anywhere”.
Netanyahu later said he had spoken to Donald Trump on
Monday night and told the US president “he had corrected a
historic injustice”.
“I said to President Trump that we are not in a foreign land,”
he said of the Palestinian territories. “This is our homeland for
over 3,000 years. The reason that we are called ‘Jews’ is
because we came from here, from Judea,” he added, using the
region’s biblical name.
In September, days before he was due to run in a national
election, Netanyahu said he intended to annex Jewish
settlements, but gave only a vague timeframe.
After that announcement, warned that the move could have a
“major impact” on the peace treaty between Jordan and
Israel.
The US policy shift is likely to trigger significant anger in
Jordan, a staunch US ally whose population is about 70%
Palestinian, who are descended from refugees. The Jordanian
government’s official position is that those refugees and their
descendants will one day be able to return to an independent
Palestinian state, and considers any policy that undermines
the two-state solution to be an existential threat.