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Israel’s Netanyahu Hopes to Annex All West Bank Settlements

Israel’s Netanyahu Hopes to Annex All West Bank Settlements

(Bloomberg) -- Embattled Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, running in an election that could be the fight of his political life, said he hopes to annex all Jewish West Bank settlements.

Israel will build more settlements and won’t uproot settlers, Netanyahu said Sunday in a speech in the West Bank settlement of Elkana.

“With God’s help, we will extend Jewish sovereignty to all settlements,” he said. A senior Palestinian official called for international sanctions against Israel.

The annexation of captured West Bank territory, long considered taboo in Israeli politics because of the international outcry it would spark, has become the clarion call of the Israeli right. With polls showing Netanyahu having no easy path to forming a coalition government after the Sept. 17 ballot, backing annexation might help him cement his nationalist credentials with right-wingers who have other options beyond his Likud party. Netanyahu has made such pre-election vows before.

“What’s happening right now is he’s focusing his messaging to those in the religious Zionist camp, because he fears he’s losing in the polls to groups like Yamina and Otzma Yehudit,” Hebrew University lecturer Yonatan Freeman said, referring to other nationalist factions.

Peace Plan

It’s also possible that Netanyahu is hinting that an unseen U.S. plan for a Middle East peace settlement “will leave Israel with sovereignty in certain areas” of the West Bank, which Israel captured along with other territories in the 1967 Middle East war, Freeman added.

David Friedman, the Trump administration’s ambassador to Israel, in a radical departure from decades of U.S. policy, has said the Jewish state has the right to annex some areas of the West Bank, a move widely regarded as a violation of international law governing occupied territories. He also backed moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv in May 2018, a measure that led to a rupture between the U.S. and Palestinians who view it as compromising their claim to east Jerusalem as a future capital.

But with the issue of annexation so contentious both internationally and domestically, Netanyahu won’t extend Jewish sovereignty anywhere unless it’s part of a peace deal that has broad international backing beyond the Trump administration, Freeman predicted.

“In the end, the U.S. administration changes” and annexation is “a major thing which has major implications for security and relations with the world,” he said. The U.S. has said it won’t unveil the political component of its Middle East peace plan until after the Israeli ballot.

Annexation of land where settlements stand could constitute as much as 60% of the West Bank, when taking into account things like roads that service them.

‘Enough Impunity’

Saeb Erekat, a longtime peace negotiator and now secretary general of the Palestine Liberation Organization, called for international penalties against Israel over its actions on seized land. “Israel’s PM is announcing further annexation of occupied territory,” Erekat said on Twitter. “Enough impunity: There’s an international responsibility to impose sanctions on Israel after decades of systematic crimes.”

In his remarks Sunday, Netanyahu didn’t talk about acting unilaterally, and his use of “with God’s help” could offer him wiggle room, said Professor Efraim Inbar, president of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security research center.

But, depending on the election’s outcome and the composition of the next government, he may have latitude to push forward with the annexation of certain areas of the West Bank that a majority of Israelis would want to hold on to in any peace deal, Inbar said.

“I don’t think sweeping annexation would be taken well here in Israel, for sure, or elsewhere,” but there is broad support in Israel for maintaining control of the Gush Etzion settlement bloc south of Jerusalem and the Jordan Rift Valley, Inbar said, adding the caveat: “It would of course have to be in coordination with the Americans.”

Days before the April 9 election that failed to produce a government, Netanyahu similarly suggested that he’d extend sovereignty over areas of the West Bank where settlements stand. At the time, that may have been a ploy to shift the campaign focus from multiple corruption allegations against him.

To contact the reporter on this story: Amy Teibel in Jerusalem at ateibel@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Lin Noueihed at lnoueihed@bloomberg.net, Michael Winfrey, Sara Marley

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