US does not have right to give any legitimacy to Israeli settlement: Palestine

Palestine has condemned the US decision to abandon its four-decades-old position that Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank are inconsistent with international law.

Nabil Abu Rudeineh, the spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said the US does not have the right to give any legitimacy to Israeli settlement.

Chief negotiator Saeb Erekat said the decision threatened to replace international law, with, what he called, the law of the jungle.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that the United States no longer views dozens of Jewish settlements established by Israel in the occupied West Bank as



inconsistent with international law.

Pompeo said the US decision should not be used as a precedent for any other part of the world or interpret it as an attempt to prejudge the ultimate status of the West Bank.

The US embassy in Jerusalem has issued a travel warning for the Palestinian territories following Mike Pompeo's announcement

Unlike Israel and the US, the international community sees the presence and expansion of Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank and annexed East Jerusalem as illegal and considers it to be one of the major obstacles on the way to peace.