Then-President Donald Trump offered to give the occupied West Bank to the King of Jordan Abdullah II in January 2018. A new book details how Trump offered the West Bank to Jordan’s king.
King Abdullah II reportedly told an American friend that when Trump made the offer, “I thought I was having a heart attack.”
Trump promised King Abdullah II a “great deal” according to the forthcoming book “The Divider: Trump in the White House 2017-2021,” written by Peter Baker, chief White House correspondent for The New York Times, and Susan Glasser, staff writer for The New Yorker.
“I couldn’t breathe. I was bent doubled-over,” King Abdullah II said.
The occupied West Bank was obviously not Trump’s to give away. The United States does not own the West Bank, nor control it. It does not have the authority whatsoever to offer the occupied West Bank to another person, country, or entity.
The West Bank territory is at the heart of one of the most contentious, enduring, and complicated disputes in the world. The Israel-Palestine conflict has been ongoing for decades.
The West Bank is a chunk of land between Israel and Jordan, a Palestinian territory that has been occupied by Israel for decades.
From 1950 to 1967, the West Bank was governed as part of Jordan. That was the last time, more than half a century ago, that Jordan had a hand in governing or controlling the West Bank.
Israel seized the West Bank in the Six-Day War in 1967 and Israeli forces have occupied it ever since.
Since the Israeli occupation began, groups of Israelis have been moving into the West Bank to establish communities known as settlements. The Israeli settlements in the West Bank are considered illegal under international law by much of the world.
The United States has close ties with Israel but has long pushed for there to be a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict, and has always expressed opposition to settlements.
Trump repeatedly undermined these goals and these positions. Trump adopted an overwhelmingly pro-Israel stance that included controversial moves such as moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem.
The Trump administration also broke from years of precedent in 2019 by announcing that the US would no longer view settlements as inconsistent with international law. Even when it came to Trump’s administration’s “peace plan” for the Middle East, it was overwhelmingly pro-Israel.
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