(Bloomberg Opinion) -- It’s looking more and more likely that the new Israel’s government agreed between Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party and Benny Gantz’s Blue and White coalition will proceed with a plan to annex large parts of the West Bank. In Israel and the U.S., much discussion has focused on when exactly the land-grab might occur, and how the Trump administration would react to it.
President Trump, remember, has already blessed the idea of annexation. But, as I have suggested before, he may not want it to happen before presidential election in November. Netanyahu and Gantz will undoubtedly be expecting some guidance from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo when he arrives in Jerusalem today.
Little attention is being paid, however, to how annexation will be perceived by other actors. In much of the world, there is already growing unease over the future Israel will be imposing on the Palestinians. If the five million Palestinians living in the territories occupied in 1967 are deprived of more land without even the basic rights of citizenship, it may become impossible for Israel to escape the stigma of an apartheid state.
Nor will the international community fail to notice that the Israelis are unilaterally abrogating solemn treaty commitments. In the 1993 Declaration of Principles it agreed with the Palestinian Liberation Organization—under the sponsorship of the U.S. and Russia—Israel promised not to annex occupied territories. Breaking that word, even with American approval, will cause serious and lasting diplomatic damage.
How would the world react to annexation? Among the major powers, Russia and China will likely issue formal expressions of regret, but do little else: Moscow and Beijing will not risk their strong ties to Israel over this issue. Europe is another matter, however.
More than likely, European governments will regard the newly-annexed areas illegitimate, as they do many other Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Although there is little they can do to actually prevent the annexation, they can impose an economic cost on Israel. Members of the European Union are already considering punitive measures, ranging from restrictions on trade agreements and the denial of grants.
Many European countries have laws distinguishing between goods and services produced in illegitimate settlements—which are labeled to show their origin or excluded from advantageous trade terms—and those produced in Israel proper. Israelis setting up businesses in annexed land could struggle for access to European markets.
There will be a political price, as well. Over time, Europeans will increasingly view a greater Israeli state as fundamentally illegitimate because it has been rendered indistinguishable from settlements. This view will inform the policies European governments adopt toward Israel.
Most emerging countries will likewise take a dim view of annexation: they have a stake in an international system that prohibits land-grabs by war. India could conceivably regard it as vindication of its own policies in Kashmir, but will at least express pro-forma disapproval. South Africa, Brazil, Mexico and others will be more forceful in their criticism—especially in the United Nations and other multilateral bodies—and will resist the normalization of an expanded Israel.
The same goes for the Islamic nations, even distant ones like Indonesia and Nigeria. In the Middle East, annexation will deepen hostility toward Israel from a wide range of actors, from Iran and Turkey to Islamist groups. And if Hezbollah and Hamas step up attacks on Israeli targets, they will have a ready-made justification that many Muslims around the world will find persuasive.
Annexation would virtually rule out diplomatic recognition of Israel by other Arab countries, even those that have recently been cultivating closer strategic relations, such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. It would even threaten relations with Arab states that do recognize Israel: Egypt and Jordan.
In the longer term, the reactions of Arab and other Muslim states will be governed by what the Palestinians do. The annexation plan leaves them marooned an autonomous area in the West Bank, entirely surrounded by the expanded Israel. Netanyahu, who calls this a “state-minus,” is calculating that Palestinians will have no option but to take whatever they can get.
This is wishful thinking. Palestinians will not surrender their historic claims and national aspirations in exchange for a West Bank enclave with limited self-rule within a greater Israel. A violent new uprising may be inevitable, requiring a military response from the Israeli Defense Forces—in turn risking more international opprobrium.
Even without a conflagration, Israel will essentially be suppressing the basic human rights of millions of people—and there won’t even be a pretense of this being a temporary situation, pending an eventual peace agreement. No amount of support from the Trump administration can erase that stain.
This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
Hussein Ibish is a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington.
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