Secretary of State George Shultz reiterated today United States opposition to new Israeli settlements being built on the West Bank, but stressed that the Jews who live there now have the “right” to remain in Judaea and Samaria.
“I think that the principle that Jews have the right to live on the West Bank to the Israelis is an important principle and I agree,” he said in an appearance on NBC-TV’s “Meet the Press.”
Shultz’s comment was made in response to a question about the State Department statement last week that it would be “impractical” to dismantle the settlements now there. The statement followed the U.S. veto of an Arab-sponsored resolution in the United Nations Security Council calling for the international community not to provide Israel any assistance that could be used for the settlements.
In explaining the veto, the U.S. Ambassador, Charles Lichenstein, said it would be neither “practical or even appropriate to call for the dismantling of the existing settlements” as the resolution urged.
POSITION CONSISTENT WITH U.S. INITIATIVE
Shultz said today that the U.S. position was “perfectly consistent” with what President Reagan said in his September I peace initiative. “Insofar as the settlements on the West Bank are concerned one could foresee them staying right where they are, but the residents of those settlements would live under the legal jurisdiction of whatever legal jurisdiction resulted from the negotiations, ” the Secretary said.
“That is distinct from what happened in the Sinai,” Shultz added. In the Sinai all Jewish settlements were dismantled as part of the Egyptian-Israeli peace agreement after Egypt adamantly refused to allow any of the settlements to remain in the area it would control.
But as for new settlements, Shultz stressed the U.S. has “stressed consistently” that “the new settlements on the West Bank are not constructive, they don’t help us at all in our search for peace in that region.”
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