The Trump administration seems to care very little about international consensus and international law on the status of the occupied territories. Instead, it has sabotaged the American government’s standing as an “honest broker” and effectively encouraged support for the continuation of Israeli colonization of Arab land.

Until now, no country had recognized Israel’s act of plunder in the Golan Heights. Following the Six Day war in 1967, Israel expelled 130,000 Syrians from the Golan Heights. 14 years later, in  1981, Israel annexed the territory – in violation of international law. The United Nations member states, including the U.S., immediately declared Israeli efforts to change the Golan Height’s status “null and void.” A small population of Syrian Druze are the only survivors of that ethnic cleansing operation.

Greg Shupak, author of The Wrong Story: Palestine, Israel and the Media, argues that “American foreign policy and Israeli settler-colonial capitalism shape what happens across historic Palestine.”

We recently saw this unfold when Trump issued his Jerusalem decree to recognize the city as the Israeli capital, which goes against the international community’s consensus of Jerusalem as a final status issue in negotiations and, again, violates international law. While the U.S. Embassy was moving from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem on May 15, Israeli snipers were massacring 60 Palestinians protesters in the Great March of Return at the Gaza fence.