Gantz Backs West Bank Annexation in Search of Election Edge
Gantz Backs West Bank Annexation in Search of Election Edge
(Bloomberg) -- Benny Gantz, the top challenger to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel’s March 2 election, vowed to work to annex West Bank land for a first time should he become the country’s next leader, in a transparent ploy for right-wing votes.
Unlike Netanyahu, however, Gantz doesn’t advocate extending Israeli sovereignty over the Jordan Valley unilaterally, but in coordination with an international community that largely opposes such a move. Palestinians claim all of the West Bank for a future state and see annexation as a body blow to any hope of resuming peace talks that stalled in 2014.
“Governments that previously discussed returning” the Jordan Valley “made a serious security strategic mistake,” former military chief Gantz said during a tour of the area, according to a spokesman for his centrist Blue and White bloc. Under his leadership, Israel would annex the territory “through an agreed-upon national process and in coordination with the international community.”
Annexing the Jordan Valley has been a controversial topic in the three election campaigns Israel has been through over the past year. Netanyahu responded to Gantz’s remarks by daring him to act now.
“Why wait for the elections if sovereignty can already be applied to the Jordan Valley with a broad consensus in the Knesset?” the prime minister said, referring to Israel’s parliament.
Annexation of West Bank territory, captured in the 1967 Middle East war, had been considered taboo for decades in Israeli politics because of the international outcry it would spark. But as religious and nationalist political parties gained clout, and peacemaking with the Palestinians drifted off the country’s agenda, the notion has come to resonate with large swaths of the Israeli public.
There have been signs the Trump administration, which has endorsed Israeli positions on the conflict with the Palestinians, might be amenable. The U.S. envoy to Israel, David Friedman, has said Israel has the right to retain some of the West Bank, and Secretary of State Michael Pompeo recently overturned decades of American policy by saying Israel’s West Bank settlements don’t violate international law.
Netanyahu himself has said the Trump administration’s as-yet unseen Middle East peace plan presents Israel with “a historic, onetime chance to extend Israeli sovereignty over our settlements in Judea and Samaria, and also to other areas important to our security, our heritage, and our future.” Judea and Samaria are the biblical names for the West Bank.
Yet, for all the froth about annexation, the Yediot Ahronot newspaper reported last month that the Israeli government has stopped discussions about annexing the territory in light of a possible war crimes investigation by the International Criminal Court, which cited Netanyahu’s campaign promise as a potential violation of international law.
To contact the reporter on this story: Yaacov Benmeleh in Tel Aviv at ybenmeleh@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Riad Hamade at rhamade@bloomberg.net, Amy Teibel, Mark Williams
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