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The unfunny punchline:
STEPHEN ZUNES: Well, the United States is also the only country in the world that has formally recognized Israel’s illegal annexation of Syria’s Golan Heights. We’ve made a de facto recognition of Israel’s annexation of greater East Jerusalem. And since the Trump administration, we have considered the illegal settlements as part of Israel. And so there’s a link there. But in regard — but we’re talking about a whole nation when we’re talking about Western Sahara.
And what’s interesting — and this development just happened last week — we had thought we had scored a great victory when Congress blocked U.S. military cooperation with the repressive Armed Forces of Morocco until Morocco agreed to find a mutually acceptable political solution to Western Sahara, but the Biden administration just recently claimed that Morocco had done so via their dubious autonomy plan, which denies the people their right to self-determination, as the United Nations and World Court has demanded. It rules out independence and makes permanent the occupation. I mean, if Russia conquered 80% of Ukraine and offered some vague form of autonomy under Russian sovereignty, would Biden find that it constituted a mutually acceptable political solution? But this is what U.S. policy is. And again, we are a big outlier here, just as we’re trying to lead the world in upholding these international legal norms against the expansion of territory by force.
www.democracynow.org/2022/3/21/biden_admin_on_western_sahara_occupation
STEPHEN ZUNES: Well, the United States is also the only country in the world that has formally recognized Israel’s illegal annexation of Syria’s Golan Heights. We’ve made a de facto recognition of Israel’s annexation of greater East Jerusalem. And since the Trump administration, we have considered the illegal settlements as part of Israel. And so there’s a link there. But in regard — but we’re talking about a whole nation when we’re talking about Western Sahara.
And what’s interesting — and this development just happened last week — we had thought we had scored a great victory when Congress blocked U.S. military cooperation with the repressive Armed Forces of Morocco until Morocco agreed to find a mutually acceptable political solution to Western Sahara, but the Biden administration just recently claimed that Morocco had done so via their dubious autonomy plan, which denies the people their right to self-determination, as the United Nations and World Court has demanded. It rules out independence and makes permanent the occupation. I mean, if Russia conquered 80% of Ukraine and offered some vague form of autonomy under Russian sovereignty, would Biden find that it constituted a mutually acceptable political solution? But this is what U.S. policy is. And again, we are a big outlier here, just as we’re trying to lead the world in upholding these international legal norms against the expansion of territory by force.
www.democracynow.org/2022/3/21/biden_admin_on_western_sahara_occupation