You wouldn’t think a small revision to the rules governing three bi-national foundations run by the United States and Israel would represent a major change in policy. Bute such is the case with the new rules governing three joint U.S.-Israeli foundations, when the new rules in question extend their mandate over all of the West Bank.
Until now, those mandates have stopped at the Green Line, as a matter of American policy which only recognized Israeli sovereignty behind the Green Line, the demarcation of territory controlled by Israel as of the end of its war of independence in 1949. Virtually everything the series of Netanyahu governments have done in the West Bank have been directed at erasing that Green Line and this was a major step forward.
At the same time, the U.S. also broke with long-held policy by allowing U.S. citizens born in Jerusalem to list Israel as their country of birth. These are both profound policy shifts covered in technical changes, and I explore the meaning, implications and history of these matters in my latest piece for Responsible Statecraft.