4 Reasons Why Israel’s West Bank Annexation Plans Aren’t Happening on July 1
Gabe Friedman
JTA, June 30, 2020Since April, all eyes following the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have been glued to July 1.Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had negotiated the date into his government coalition deal with his rival Benny Gantz. On July 1, as stipulated in the agreement, Netanyahu could put the topic of annexing the West Bank — a move that would have enormous political repercussions well beyond the Middle East — up for a vote in his Cabinet or in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament.(Here’s a guide to what West Bank annexation, a move to apply Israeli sovereignty to Jewish settlements that Netanyahu has long desired, would mean.)But on Tuesday, Netanyahu signaled that nothing big will happen on July 1. After meeting with White House envoy Avi Berkowitz and U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman, Netanyahu said they “spoke about the question of sovereignty, which we are working on these days and we will continue to work on in the coming days.”With that, the anticipation that had been building for months — or some could argue for over a year, during which Netanyahu promised annexation in not one or two but three election campaigns — dissipated. “The coming days” takes us into an indeterminate future.This doesn’t mean that annexation in full or some other form won’t ever happen. In fact, Netanyahu has floated the idea of annexing just a few large settlement blocs close to July 1 to try to appease all sides. Still, missing the July 1 date is symbolic of how fraught the process has become. Here are the reasons why it hasn’t come together the way that Netanyahu had hoped.
The U.S. team is uneasy.
Tuesday’s meeting was just one of several that Netanyahu has had over the past few months with the U.S. Middle East peace team anchored by Jared Kushner, Friedman and the 31-year-old Berkowitz. The team’s message has been straightforward for months: Slow down the process.
That’s despite the fact that the Trump administration’s own peace plan, released in January, gives Israel the green light to add West Bank lands to its map in a future two-state solution with the Palestinians. The Palestinians would get about 70% of the West Bank’s territory and Israel would annex the rest.
Some have speculated that the holdup is due to geographic specifics, or which West Bank settlements the U.S. will approve annexing. The U.S. administration has also been tied up with responding to the coronavirus crisis — something that Kushner has also spent time on — and is wary of getting involved in a controversial move at the same time.
There’s also the fact that the Palestinians have outright rejected the Trump plan, which could be weighing on the U.S. team.
In addition, the Israeli army reportedly has been kept completely out of the loop of the process, giving rise to anxieties about a possible bungled security response. … [To read the full article, click the following LINK – Ed.]
______________________________________________________
Don’t Buy the ‘Annexation’ Hype
Eugene Kontorovich
WSJ, June 23, 2020
Israel is expected to announce as early as next week that it is normalizing the legal status of Jewish settlements in the West Bank by fully applying Israeli civilian law. The U.S. is expected to recognize Israeli sovereignty in these areas, marking the culmination of a series of pro-Israel Trump administration policies, as well as the first step in its vision for a negotiated process that could lead to a Palestinian state.
There are many misunderstandings about the planned move—starting with what to call it. It is widely described as an Israeli “annexation” of West Bank territory, also known as Judea and Samaria. But annexation has a precise meaning in international law: the forcible incorporation by one state of the territory of another state. The land to which Israel seeks to apply its laws isn’t legally the territory of any other state, nor has it been since Israel’s independence in 1948. Neither the U.S. nor the European Union recognizes the existence of a Palestinian state, and Israel’s sovereign claim to the territory is superior to any other country’s. Putting this move in the same category as Russia’s seizure of Crimea is entirely misleading.
There is no one-word name for what Israel plans to do because it is so technical and pedestrian. Israel already governs the territory in question, as it has since 1967, when it liberated the land from a two-decade Jordanian occupation. But at that time Israel didn’t fully apply its domestic laws there, leaving it under military administration. Israel expected the Arab states to sue for peace after the Six-Day War, and it was prepared to transfer some of the land to them. There was no point in hurriedly applying Israeli law to territory that might not remain Israeli after a peace settlement.
The current system of governance was intended to be temporary, but Israel retained it during decades of negotiations, all of which resulted in Palestinian rejection of internationally backed offers of statehood. In the Middle East, nothing is as permanent as the temporary.
Over the past 53 years, Jews have returned to Judea and Samaria, territories from which they had been, to a man, ethnically cleansed by the Jordanians in 1949. Today, more than 400,000 Israelis live in West Bank settlements, still governed by an odd patchwork of military regulations. As a result, property is governed by obscure Ottoman land law. Permitting for infrastructure projects is difficult and burdensome. Most Israeli environmental regulations don’t apply. After five decades of Palestinian rejectionism, it is hard to argue that the legal regulation of these communities must remain in limbo until a far-off peace deal is signed. … [To read the full article, click the following LINK – Ed.]
______________________________________________________
Cost of Applying Israel Law to Judea & Samaria (West Bank)
Yoram Ettinger
The Ettinger Report, July 3, 2020
The suggestion that the application of the Israeli law to the Jordan Valley and parts of Judea and Samaria would severely undermine Israeli interests, jeopardize Israel’s peace treaties with Jordan and Egypt and Israel’s overall ties with Arab countries, is divorced from the Israeli track record and Middle East reality.
Israel’s track record
The resurgence of the Jewish State from the ashes of WW2 to global prominence, technologically, scientifically, medically, agriculturally, economically, diplomatically and militarily – despite systematic adverse global pressure and Arab wars and terrorism – has demonstrated that there are no free lunches for independent nations, especially in the Middle East.
For example, in 1948, Prime Minister Ben Gurion, Israel’s Founding Father, did not wait for a green light from the White House, in order to declare independence. He was aware that a declaration of independence would trigger a costly Arab military invasion. The CIA estimated that it could amount to “a second Holocaust.” However, Ben Gurion concluded that achieving a supreme goal was preconditioned upon the willingness to pay a supreme cost. Indeed, the war against the Arab invasion consumed 1% (6,000) of the Jewish population (600,000). Fending off the Arab invasion, Israel expanded its borders by 30%, and would not retreat to the suicidal 1947 lines, despite brutal global (including US) pressure. The pressure on Israel dissipated, but Israel’s buttressed borders were preserved.
In June 1967
Prime Minister Eshkol preempted a planned Egypt-Syria-Jordan joint offensive, in defiance of a strong red light from the White House (“Israel will not be alone unless it decides to go alone”), and despite prominent Israelis who preferred the venue of negotiation and mediation, and predicted a resounding Israeli defeat on the battlefield. Eshkol was aware that Israel’s existence, in the violently intolerant and unpredictable Middle East, required a firm posture of deterrence, which could entail heavy cost. In the aftermath of the war, Eshkol reunited Jerusalem and renewed Jewish presence beyond the 1949/1967 indefensible Green Line, in spite of a very heavy US and global pressure. While the pressure on Israel has subsided, the Jewish presence in Judea, Samaria and eastern Jerusalem has surged to 700,000.
In June 1981, Prime Minister Begin ordered the destruction of Iraq’s nuclear reactor, notwithstanding the menacing red light from the White House and the opposition by the Mossad, the IDF Intelligence and additional Israeli defense authorities. The naysayers were certain that an Israeli attack had a very slim chance of success. They feared that this would trigger a global Islamic assault on Israel; it would produce a European boycott of Israel, would create an irreparable rift with the USA and would doom Israel, economically and diplomatically. Begin decided that sparing Israel a traumatic nuclear assault justified even a traumatic cost. While the pessimistic assessments crashed on the rocks of reality, the Iraqi nuclear threat was terminated. … [To read the full article, click the following LINK – Ed.]
______________________________________________________
1080 Hypocritical European Parliamentarians Sign Against Sovereignty
Manfred Gerstenfeld
Arutz Sheva, June 29, 2020
On June 23, 1080 hypocritical European parliamentarians from 25 European countries published a letter to European governments and leaders against Israeli annexation of the “West Bank.”
Former leader of the extreme left Israeli Meretz party, Zahava Galon tweeted on June 24 that she was proud that she had initiated this letter. She wrote that she did so jointly with three others: former Meretz MK Naomi Chazan, former Attorney General — under Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin — Michael Ben-Yair and former Knesset member and Jewish Agency Chair Avraham Burg. The latter in 2015 announced that he had joined Hadash – part of the Joint (Arab) List.
In their letter the parliamentarians expressed serious concerns about “President Trump’s plan for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the imminent prospect of Israeli annexation of West Bank territory.” The letter continued: “We are deeply worried about the precedent this would set for international relations at large.”
They added a major fallacy: “For decades Europe has been promoting a just solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the form of a two-state solution in line with international law and relevant UN Security Council Resolutions.”
What the EU has been promoting – a two state solution in today’s reality, can only qualify as a “just solution” in hell, or alternatively…in Sodom and Gomorrah.
There is nothing “just” in what Europe has been promoting. In 2006, the only Palestinian Authority parliamentary elections gave a majority to Hamas. This movement, according to its charter, aims to commit genocide of Jews. The second largest and only other relevant Palestinian party is Fatah which controls the Palestinian Authority. It rewards murderers – or their families – with pensions.
What the EU has been promoting – a two state solution in such a reality, can only qualify as a “just solution” in hell, or alternatively if one looks for a classic example: in Sodom and Gomorrah. The abuse of the word “just” recurs twice more in the letter.
Where the hypocrisy lies
The letter’s signatories claim that a two-state solution of which one future state is led by murder promoters, is “according to international law.” If so, that type of legislation may be at least partly a monstrosity. The UN is partly an antisemitic body. The majority of resolutions passed at its annual General Assembly are directed only against one country – Israel. According to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, such discrimination is an antisemitic act.
The signatories also claim in the letter that if Israel goes forward with annexation — their expression for what Israel calls ‘applying sovereignty’ – this move would be fatal to prospects of Israeli-Palestinian peace. Of course, these hypocrites do not refer to the 2008 extremely generous peace proposal of then Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, which was rejected by Mohammad Abbas. … [To read the full article, click the following LINK – Ed.]
______________________________________________________
For Further Reference:
Pulling the Annexation Trigger: Shurat Hadin, YouTube, June 25, 2020 –– As the Israeli government prepares for the annexation of settlements in the West Bank on July 1st, both powerful support and strong opposition arise.
Pompeo Says Annexation Up to Israel, Despite Widespread Condemnation: The National, June 25, 2020 — US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Wednesday it was up to Israel to decide whether to annex settlements in the occupied West Bank, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to do despite international opposition.
Caroline Glick Dissects the Annexation Part of the President’s Israeli Peace Plan: Caroline B. Glick, SoundCloud, June 24, 2020 — Caroline Glick, Senior Columnist at Breitbart News, the Senior Contributing Chief Columnist for the Jerusalem Post and author of “The Israeli Solution: A One State Plan for Peace in the Middle East,” joins Tony Perkins to discuss the benefits of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan to apply Israel’s sovereignty to areas in Judea and Samaria in accordance with President Trump’s vision for peace.
New Poll Shows Uncertainty Among Israelis on West Bank Annexation: Benjamin Kerstein, Algemeiner, July 6, 2020 — A new survey shows a sharp divide among Israelis on the issue of annexing parts of the West Bank, with proponents and opponents almost evenly divided, along with a large number of undecided.
‘If Trump Pulls His Support for Israel, He Will Lose the Evangelical Vote and the Election’: Ariel Kahana and Daniel Siryoti, Israel Hayom, July 2, 2020 — The pro-Israel evangelical Christian community in the US is voicing criticism of the delay to Israel’s plan to announce sovereignty in the Jordan Valley and settlements in Judea and Samaria. Evangelical leader Mike Evans is pressing the Trump administration to recognize Israeli sovereignty there.
Ron Dermer: We Must Stop Pursuing a Two-state Illusion and Commit to a Realistic Two-state Solution: Ron Dermer, Washington Post,June 19, 2020 — Determined to advance a realistic solution to the conflict with the Palestinians, Israel’s prime minister laid out his vision of peace in a speech to the Knesset. The Palestinians, he said, would have “less than a state,” Israel would retain security control over the Jordan Valley “in the broadest meaning of that term,” Jerusalem would remain united under Israel’s sovereignty, and settlement blocs in Judea and Samaria would become part of lsrael
