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| - US President Donald Trump's administration has made a series of shifts in American policy to back Israel in its long-running conflict with the Palestinians. Here is a recap: In February 2017, a month after being inaugurated, Trump warmly welcomes Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the White House and repeats his aim for a solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict under his watch. But in a major break with decades of US policy, he says the long-proposed two-state solution of a Palestinian state existing alongside the Jewish nation is not the only option. In May 2017, Trump becomes the first sitting US president to visit the Western Wall in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem. In December 2017, Trump announces Washington will officially recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, another reversal of US policy. The Holy City is a major sticking point in the conflict as the Palestinians also want its annexed eastern sector as capital of a future state. The US embassy is officially transferred from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem on May 14, 2018, a day marked by clashes in the Gaza Strip where about 60 Palestinian protesters are killed by Israeli fire. Outraged, Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas rejects Washington's historic role as mediator in the conflict. In August 2018, the United States axes more than $200 million in bilateral aid for Gaza and the West Bank, and says it will end all funding for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA. The next month, it announces it is closing the Palestine Liberation Organisation's mission in Washington. In March 2019, it downgrades its diplomatic mission to the Palestinians by closing its Jerusalem consulate general which had served as a de facto embassy to the Palestinians. Later in March, Trump says that Washington favours the recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. Israel seized a large part of the strategic plateau from Syria in the 1967 Middle East war and annexed it in 1981, a move never recognised by the international community. Netanyahu hails Trump's comments, while Syria responds that this would be a "flagrant violation of international law". In April 2019, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo refuses to say whether Washington would oppose newly re-elected Netanyahu's idea of annexing Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank. In June, the US ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, says Israel has the right to annex at least "some" of the West Bank. The Palestinians say this is tantamount to "US complicity with Israeli colonial plans". In November, Pompeo announces the administration has decided that Israel's settlement of civilians in the West Bank is not "inconsistent with international law". The position long held by the international community is that Israeli settlements established in occupied Palestinian territory violate international law. More than 600,000 Jewish settlers live in the West Bank and east Jerusalem among three million Palestinians, with tensions often high. bur-br-acm-jmy/hc
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