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U.S. to Permit Funding for Cooperative Projects in Israeli West Bank Communities

(Jerusalem Post) Lahav Harkov - Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman signed an agreement on Wednesday removing language from previous agreements that barred cooperative Israel-U.S. projects "in geographic areas which came under the administration of the Government of Israel after June 5, 1967." This will affect three large endowments that provided grants to American and Israeli academics and companies for research and technology - the Binational Science Foundation (BSF), the Binational Industrial Research and Development Foundation (BIRD), and the Binational Agricultural Research and Development Fund (BARD). In November 2019, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that the U.S. was returning to the position of former president Ronald Reagan that "the establishment of Israeli civilian settlements in the West Bank is not per se inconsistent with international law." Prof. Eugene Kontorovich of George Mason Law School and director of the Kohelet Policy Forum said Tuesday, "This is really quite momentous. It is the first time the U.S. has adopted a policy that explicitly and clearly authorizes the use of funds across the 'green line.'...It's a very strong recognition that settlements are not illegal."
2020-10-29 00:00:00
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