Israel and the US signed today a deal to expand the US funding to Israeli scientific research projects in the colonial settlements across the West Bank and Golan Heights.

As a result, Palestinian presidential spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeinah stated that the US announcement on lifting the ban on US funding of Israeli scientific research projects in the settlements in the Palestinian territories occupied in 1967 is a serious precedent that is condemned, rejected, and could not be tolerated.

“This step indicates an active US complicity in the occupation of the Palestinian territories and a consolidation of Trump administration policy of violating the international law and the United Nations resolutions which have condemned settlement activities in all their forms, most recently of which was UN Security Council Resolution 2334," Abu Rudeinah said in a press statement.

“All settlements in the occupied territories are illegal, and any US action in this respect is illegal and constitutes a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention,” he added. "We reject the US policies which attempt to help Israel cement its occupation of the Palestinian territories."

He affirmed that such policies would never give legitimacy to anyone as Israeli settlements are doomed.