US to extend bilateral agreements with Israel into Judea and Samaria, Golan
The United States and Israel will eliminate territorial restrictions for bilateral agreements in a ceremony on Wednesday.
The move will build upon a policy shift made by U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo this past November, in which America no longer recognizes Israeli settlements in Judea and Samaria as illegal under international law.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman are slated to participate in a signing ceremony at Ariel University in Samaria.
The agreement will immediately expand scientific and academic cooperation to include projects within Judea and Samaria, and the Golan Heights—disputed territories under Israeli control. The United States recognized Israel’s full sovereignty over the Golan Heights in March 2019.
Israel captured Judea and Samaria, in addition to the Golan, from Jordan and Syria, respectively, during the defensive Six-Day War in 1967.
Israel formally annexed the Golan Heights in 1981. Judea and Samaria remain disputed territories and were divided into non-contiguous zones (“Area A,” “Area B” and “Area C”) of varying Israeli or Palestinian administrative and security control under the 1993 Oslo Accords
'In the spirit of the #AbrahamAccords, we place great value on academic, cultural, commercial and diplomatic engagement as the best path to peace,' David Friedman, @USAmbIsrael, at signing ceremony of Israel-US scientific research cooperation pic.twitter.com/mE0pmkNjU2
— i24NEWS English (@i24NEWS_EN) October 28, 2020
And to those malevolent boycotters, I have a simple message today: You are wrong and you will fail. You are wrong because you deny what cannot be denied, the millennial connection between the people of Israel and the Land of Israel—it's over three-thousand years old.
— PM of Israel (@IsraeliPM) October 28, 2020
Friedman: US-Israel ‘righting old wrongs’ by extending W. Bank agreements
Extending agreements between the US and Israel to the West Bank, Golan and east Jerusalem bolsters the ties between the countries, US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman said in a ceremony removing the only territorial limitations in agreements between Washington and Jerusalem on Wednesday.Trump: Up to 10 countries set for peace with Israel, ‘largely after’ elections
“We are righting an old wrong and strengthening yet again the unbreakable bond between our two countries,” Friedman said at a signing ceremony with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at Ariel University in Samaria.
Netanyahu and Friedman signed new versions of three agreements on research cooperation, which erase a line that says "cooperative projects sponsored by the Foundation may not be conducted in geographic areas which came under the administration of the Government of Israel after June 5, 1967, and may not relate to subjects primarily pertinent to such areas.”
The first agreement, signed in 1972, was the Binational Science Foundation, followed in 1976 the Binational Industrial Research and Development Foundation (BIRD), and then the Binational Agricultural Research and Development Fund (BARD) in 1977. All three had large endowments that provided grants to American and Israeli academics and companies for research and technology.
They also signed a new Science and Technology agreement, meant to increase government-to-government cooperation at the highest levels, which also does not have geographic restrictions.
Friedman said that BIRD, BARD and BSF, as originally written, “were subject to political limitations that did not serve the goals sought to be achieved.”
US President Donald Trump said Tuesday that there are up to 10 countries that he expects to soon normalize relations with Israel, but that the developments would largely happen after next week’s presidential elections.
Asked if there were more countries in the Middle East that would follow the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Sudan who all recently opened diplomatic relations with Israel, Trump said there were more on the way, without specifying exactly how many or which countries they were.
“We have five, but really have probably nine or ten that are right in the mix, we’re going to have a lot, I think we’ll have all of them eventually,” he told reporters at Andrews Air Force Base before hitting the campaign trail.
“The beauty is there’s peace in the Middle East with no money and no blood,” he continued. “There’s no blood all over the sand. We have five definites and I think we’ll have another five pretty much definites. And all of them, the big ones, the smaller ones.”
Asked if agreements would come before or after the November 3 election, Trump said “largely after.”
Debate moderators ignored Trump’s ‘greatest achievement’: Bolt"Peace in the middle east with no money and no blood." #Trump https://t.co/tvhusK7gPu
— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) October 27, 2020
Donald Trump came along and managed to “do the unthinkable” by brokering peace between the Israelis and the Arabs by simply bypassing the Palestinians, according to Sky News host Rowan Dean. President Donald Trump has recently brokered a third historic peace deal this time between Israel and Sudan, after previously negotiating deals between Israel and the UAE, and Bahrain. Mr Dean said bypassing Palestine to broker these deals is the “genius of Donald Trump”. "The Democrats have no solutions for the problems in the world,” he said. “You need people like Donald Trump who just cut through all the sort of red tape and get to the bottom of the nut of the problem and solve it.”