Hillary Clinton: No to Israeli Settlement

United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reiterated the perennial US demand for an Israeli settlement freeze. She said Tuesday,  that she had made clear to visiting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Israel must cease its settlement activity in the West Bank.

 

"The president [Barack Obama] was very clear yesterday in his statement that he wants to see a stop to the settlements," Clinton told reporters, a day after she and Obama met with Netanyahu in Washington.

 

"I hosted a dinner for Prime Minister Netanyahu later in the day at the State Department and we reiterated that that is the position and policy of the United States government," she said. 

 

The warning was a first sign that the smooth meeting between Barack Obama and Benjamin Netanyahu would be followed by pressure to be delivered by more junior officials. But it is a fact that the same sort of warnings were delivered for years by every US Secretary of State. While they stopped or postponed specific projects, they did not stop settlement as a whole.