Turkey: Occupation of Palestine will not be justified

By Dilara Hamit

ANKARA (AA) - Turkey opposes any measure that violates international law and prevents a fair and just solution in Palestine, the country's director of communications said on Wednesday.

"Turkey has always stood by our Palestinian brothers and sisters while supporting a peaceful resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict based on the two-state solution," Fahrettin Altun said on Twitter.

"Pushing Palestinians out of their lands is an egregious violation of international norms and occupation of Palestinian lands will never be legitimized," he said.

The U.S. on Monday reversed course on its position regarding Israeli settlements built in the occupied West Bank, breaking with over four decades of precedent in saying that they will no longer be viewed as illegal.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced the move, doing away with the State Department's 1978 legal opinion which held that settlements are "inconsistent with international law".

Roughly 650,000 Israeli Jews currently live on more than 100 settlements built since 1967, when Israel occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

The Palestinians want these territories along with the Gaza Strip for the establishment of a future Palestinian state.

International law views both the West Bank and East Jerusalem as occupied territories and considers all Jewish settlement-building activity there illegal.