US assures ‘no change’ in its policy on the status of Palestinian territories

The US state department assured that there has been no change in the US’s policy on the status of Palestinian territories, after a newly published report used different wording to describe Palestinian areas.

In its annual Human Rights Report released Wednesday, the US State Department changed its usual description of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, refraining from referring to them as “occupied” or “under occupation”.

In another section of the report, the Golan Heights was also described differently, calling it “Israeli-controlled” rather than the usual “Israeli-occupied”.

The department clarified that the word “occupied” had not been used because the report focused on human rights and not legal issues.