WEST BANK (Dispatches) – Palestine has blasted the United States for omitting the term "occupation” in describing the Israeli-occupied Palestinian and Syrian territories, saying the "hostile” move will not change the established reality.
In an annual global "human rights” report, the State Department ceased to refer to the West Bank, Gaza Strip and the Syrian Golan Heights as "occupied” and called the latter territory "Israeli-controlled.”
Reacting to the report, Nabil Abu Rudeineh, spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, said that "these American titles will not change the fact that the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967 and the occupied Arab Golan are territories under Israeli occupation in accordance with UN resolutions and international law.”
Abu Rudeineh, who also serves as Palestinian Authority deputy prime minister and information minister, said Washington’s latest move is "a continuation of the hostile approach of the American administration toward our Palestinian people and is contrary to all UN resolutions.”
The Palestinian official further said that the U.S. move to drop the term "occupation” in reference to Palestinian territories was part of Washington’s efforts "to allow what is called ‘the deal of the century’ to liquidate the Palestinian people to come to pass.”
He was referring to U.S. President Donald Trump’s yet-to-be-unveiled proposal on the Zionist-Palestinian conflict.
"But regardless of the attempts and conspiracies, our Palestinian people led by the Palestine Liberation Organization and by President Mahmoud Abbas will remain steadfast and adhering to the national constants,” said Abu Rudeineh.
"Our national project will prevail until we reach our independent Palestinian state with East al-Quds as its capital,” he stressed.
The so-called deal, a backchannel plan to allegedly reach a peace settlement between Israel and the Palestinians, was proposed by the U.S. administration late 2017.
Although the plan has not been released, leaks signal it will consist of the same tried and failed ideas.
The Zionist regime occupied the West Bank, East al-Quds and parts of Syria’s Golan Heights during the Six-Day War in 1967.
The regime is required to withdraw from all the territories seized in the war under UN Security Council Resolution 242, adopted months after the Six-Day War, in November 1967, but the Tel Aviv regime has defied that piece of international law ever since.

(L to R) U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) is accompanied by Zionist Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. ambassador to the occupied territories David Friedman as they visit the border line between Syria and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights on March 11, 2019.