
Those deliberations had picked up steam as Israel’s response to the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks drew increasingly intense international criticism. For decades, U.S. policy on settlements was guided by the 1978 determination known as the “Hansell Memorandum,” which was penned by the State Department’s then-legal adviser Herbert Hansell. Hansell’s finding did not say that settlements were “illegal” but rather “illegitimate.” Nonetheless, that memorandum shaped decades of U.S. policy on the issue.

“What I did not do but should have done, Your Honor, was to make sure that the facts the other lawyers alleged to be true were in fact true,” …







