The US ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, has made a second dramatic intervention in US Middle East policy, suggesting that only 2% of the West Bank is occupied by Israel and that the international community always intended for Israel to keep some of the land it seized in 1967 during the six-day war.

The comments, in an interview with the news channel Israeli Walla, came a day after rightwing Israeli politicians celebrated 50 years of Israeli settlement-building, prompting condemnation by Palestinian officials. “I think the settlements are part of Israel,” Friedman said, comments that seem at odds with decades of US foreign policy.

“I think that was always the expectation when resolution 242 was adopted in 1967,” he said, referring to the UN security council resolution made at the end of the six-day war, when Israeli forces occupied the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Friedman, a former personal lawyer of Donald Trump who had no experience in diplomacy before his appointment, was regarded as being a strong supporter of Jewish settlement before he was named as ambassador.(theguardian)…[+]