US opposes Israel’s plan to relocate Amona outpost to adjacent Palestinian land

The United States has expressed its opposition to the Israeli authority’s plan to move the outpost of Amona to West Bank land abandoned by Palestinians fleeing the 1967 war.

Israel’s Haaretz newspaper on Sunday quoted an unnamed senior US official as saying that the US administration had recently sent a strongly worded letter of protest to the Israeli government while an American delegation conducted a series of talks with senior Israeli officials.

Israeli political sources told the newspaper that no decision had been made on Amona, adding that the plan referred to did not involve the expropriation of land.

The Americans view the plan as deviating from commitments undertaken by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to President Barack Obama that Israel would not appropriate Palestinian land

State Department Spokeswoman Elizabeth Trudeau told reporters last week: “We’re deeply concerned by reports that the Israeli government has begun the process to take over privately-owned Palestinian land to relocate the illegal Israeli outpost of Amona.”

Haaretz had previously reported that recommendations of the Outposts Regulation Committee set out a legal mechanism for the residents of the illegal outpost of Amona in the northern West Bank to move to adjacent “abandoned” land.