A general view shows the Israeli settlement of Beitar Illit in the Israeli-occupied West Bank
April 7, 2019. REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
Posted on 04/07/2019 2:52:58 PM PDT by onyx
Palestinians voiced alarm while Israelis weighed the gravity on Sunday of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s sudden election promise to annex Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank.
Some Israeli commentators saw the right-wing leader’s pledge on Saturday, as Tuesday’s national ballot approaches, as mainly a bid to siphon votes from ultranationalist rivals long advocating annexation.
But after years of resisting far-right calls to formally put West Bank land captured in the 1967 Middle East war under permanent Israeli hold, Netanyahu could be counting on support for a dramatic shift from his close ally, U.S. President Donald Trump.
“Who says that we won’t do it? We are on the way and we are discussing it,” Netanyahu, asked why he had not extended Israeli sovereignty to large West Bank settlements, told Israel’s Channel 12 News.
In March, Trump broke with decades of international consensus by recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, territory Israel captured from Syria. That followed his December 2017 recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and the U.S. embassy’s move to the holy city last May.
Asked in an interview on Friday on Israel’s Channel 13 why he wasn’t pressing Trump now to approve a West Bank settlement status change, Netanyahu replied: “Wait until the next term.”
Taking Netanyahu at his word, Palestinians seeking statehood in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem called his settlement annexation remarks a violation of international law regarding occupied territory.
“His declaration is not just in the heat of … electioneering campaigns,” said Hanan Ashrawi, a Palestine Liberation Organization official. “This is the end of any chances of peace.”
A spokesman for Hamas, the Islamist militant group that runs the Gaza Strip, said “the response to (Israeli) crimes and foolishness will be met by popular resistance, armed resistance and by all our might”.
But Israeli Education Minister Naftali Bennett, head of the New Right party and author of a plan to annex parts of the West Bank, suggested Netanyahu was simply trawling for votes.
“For the past 10 years, Netanyahu has blocked applying Israeli law to even a centimeter of land,” Bennett tweeted.
In the settlement of Karnei Shomron, spice shop owner Yehezkel Shaul said he believed Netanyahu’s annexation pledge, calling him “the most reliable and honest person”.
At the local high school, Harel Levi, 18, was not so sure.
“It’s an election promise and he’ll find some excuse later,” Levi said.
HEATED ISSUE
Settlements, which Israel’s B’Tselem rights group said cover about 10 percent of the West Bank, are one of the most heated issues in efforts to restart peace talks, frozen since 2014.
After decades of settlement-building, more than 400,000 Israelis now live in the territory, according to Israeli figures. The West Bank is home to some 2.9 million Palestinians, the Palestinian Statistics Bureau says.
A further 212,000 Israeli settlers live in East Jerusalem, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
The Palestinians and many countries consider settlements to be illegal under the Geneva conventions, which ban settling on territory occupied in war. Israel disputes this, arguing that the status of the West Bank is still disputed. But unilateral annexation would be far harder to justify, even among allies.
Trump’s predecessors as president publicly discouraged the expansion of settlements, arguing that they made it harder to negotiate a viable Palestinian state, viewed by administrations from both U.S. parties as Israel’s likeliest route to peace.
Palestinians argue that Washington did not do enough in practice to press for settlements to be curbed.
Most peace plan scenarios foresee Israel negotiating to keep some settlements in return for giving other land to the Palestinians. Annexation could take that off the table.
Netanyahu’s annexation promise was met with scepticism by Shaqued Morag, director of Peace Now, an Israeli anti-settlements group that closely monitors their expansion.
“So we must ask, why has Netanyahu said this now?” Morag said. The answer, she told Reuters, was that Netanyahu feared for his political survival and “the times dictate he makes these extreme declarations that he has no intention to follow through on”.
Israel Katz, the acting foreign minister and a member of Netanyahu’s Likud party, said its “great fear” was a split in the right-wing vote that would result in a second-place finish behind the centrist Blue and White faction.
Katz said Likud had to ensure it emerges as the biggest party, to put Netanyahu in the best position to get the nod from Israel’s president to try to put together a governing coalition. No one party has ever won a ruling parliamentary majority on its own in an Israeli election.
“Bibi Netanyahu is stuck in the past. He knows only war.”
The people of the state of Israel have known only war since its founding in 1948. 350 million Arab Muslims in 22 states versus 8 million Israelis fighting for their very existence; do the math.
If the Arabs lay down their arms, there will be peace. If the Israelis lay down their arms, there will be the extermination of the Jews in the Middle East.
Netanyahu fights for the survival of Israel not only against murderous Arabs but against stupid leftists in Israel who think peace at any price is possible.
Pray to God that Bibi is elected to a fourth term.
They should have annexed the whole West Bank after the 1973 war. It’s going to be tough to pull it off now, plus annexing only part of the West Bank sort of undermines the whole “defensible borders” thing. There’s a reason Bibi hasn’t support annexation before, and I am not sure it is wise for him to change his mind on such a serious issue for electoral gain.
Thanks onyx. The shill author of the article follows the usual script, including concern-trolling about "stalled peace talks" -- there never have been peace talks, because the terrorist Arabs/muzzies remain devoted to the genocide of the Jews.
Israel is always giving land for peace. It is the Arabs’ turn to give up their claims to the disputed lands.
The Arab countries should give homes to their “refugees,” just as Israel takes in the world’s Jewish refugees.
Bookmarking!!
He knows only war. Well, who is shooting all those rockets from gaza, who builds the tunnels, who send their kids to blow themselves up in Israeli cities?
Israel has never had a formal position the those scum mooselimb terrorists should not be allowed to live anywhere in the world {although I do}.
Any mooselimb that accepts shria is a terrorist. Read that book of evil, penned by muhammed, the koran.
Blah. blah, blah, blah.
We need new talking points.
What's the foreseeable future? Another 70 years?
Gotta want peace to find it. And Netanyahu, love him, hate him, or don't care about him, does not.
Amen to that...
“Settlements” = Jews building on Jewish land in Israel. “West Bank” my eye. That land is Judea and Samaria, and it belongs to Israel!
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