MADRID 26 Nov. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The United States Department of State has indicated this Monday that the Government of Joe Biden is “incredibly concerned” by the decision of the Israeli Defense Minister, Israel Katz, to end the administrative detention against Jewish settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
“We view the announcement that administrative detentions will no longer be applied to extremist Israeli settlers as a rollback of one of the limited tools that were effectively being used by the Israeli government to curb this illegal activity,” said the Department of Defense spokesperson. State, Matthew Miller, at a press conference.
Miller reiterated that US authorities are “very concerned about the increase in extremist violence in the West Bank, including attacks on civilians, the forced displacement of Palestinian communities and the deliberate destruction of homes and farms.”
Thus, he has defended that the Biden Administration has already asked Benjamin Netanyahu’s Executive “repeatedly” to act “to deter extremist violence by settlers” and demand “responsibilities from those who exercise it.”
The spokesperson has highlighted the actions taken by the US Government over the past year and has assured that, if necessary, they will continue to “adopt (their) own measures to demand responsibilities”, in reference to the sanctions imposed against twenty Israeli individuals and entities for these violent actions.
The Government of Israel announced last Friday the end of the issuance of administrative detention orders against settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, a controversial measure applied mainly to Palestinians that allows people suspected of charges against them to be held under arrest indefinitely and without charge. security.
Violence in the West Bank and East Jerusalem has increased following the attacks carried out on October 7, 2023 by the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) and other Palestinian factions, although in the previous ten months of that year the highest number of Palestinians killed in these territories since data collected by the United Nations.
International Law considers all settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories illegal, although the Government of Israel differentiates between those to which it has given permission and those to which it has not, which are the only ones it considers contrary to its national legislation.
However, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) affirmed in July that the Israeli settlement policy is contrary to the Fourth Geneva Convention on the forced displacement of people and that, in particular with regard to the exploitation of natural resources and The imposition of national laws is constitutive of an annexation effort and contrary to International Law.