The New York Times appended a correction on Wednesday to an inaccurate piece that had claimed the U.S. views Israeli settlements as illegal.
Times Jerusalem Bureau Chief Jodi Rudoren wrote in a Sunday dispatch on Middle East peace talks, "The United States, along with most of the world, considers these [Israeli] settlements illegal, and some of them sit in the heart of the area imagined as a future Palestinian state."
However, as the Washington Free Beacon reported Wednesday morning, this statement is inaccurate according to Middle East experts and an analysis of official U.S. policy on Israeli settlements since 1949.
The Times issued a correction soon after the Free Beacon report was published.
"An earlier version of this article misstated the United States’ view of the West Bank settlements seized by Israel in the 1967 war," reads the correction. "While much of the rest of the world considers them illegal, for several decades the United States has not taken a position on the settlements’ legality, saying instead, according to the State Department, ‘We do not accept the legitimacy of continued settlement activity.’"
The text of Rudoren’s article has been altered to state: "Most of the world considers these settlements illegal, and some of them sit in the heart of the area imagined as a future Palestinian state. The United States has not taken a position on the settlements’ legality for several decades, saying instead, according to the State Department, ‘We do not accept the legitimacy of continued settlement activity.’"