Netanyahu Keeps Annexation Details Close With Key Date Near
Netanyahu Keeps Annexation Details Obscured as Key Date Looms
(Bloomberg) --
Asked to clarify Israel’s plans to annex parts of the occupied West Bank as soon as next week, Israeli diplomats don’t have much to say, because they don’t know what they are.
The uncertainty puts the nation’s representatives in the uncomfortable position of having to fend off allies peppering them with requests for information, according to a foreign ministry official, who asked for anonymity to discuss internal affairs. A ministry spokeswoman declined to comment.
The absence of guidance has raised concern among Israeli officials about a lack of preparedness -- and questions about whether Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu actually plans to take action at all. The uncertainty extends to the military, where troops have been ordered to accelerate readiness, but commanders haven’t seen any maps, according to an Israeli official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss classified information.
Netanyahu has vowed to begin extending Israeli sovereignty to land Palestinians claim for a future state as soon as July 1, prompting an outcry across the world. Yet with just days to go, the government hasn’t spelled out -- in public or apparently in private -- what it intends to do. Netanyahu’s office also declined to comment for this story.
“We’re sort of haphazardly leaping into this,” said Chuck Freilich, a former deputy national security adviser and member of the Commanders for Israel’s Security group, which opposes the move. “This isn’t the way you go about one of the most important and consequential decisions in Israel’s history.”
If annexation was once a fringe idea, then a confluence of factors emboldened Netanyahu last year to pledge to act on it in the throes of a hard-fought election campaign. The maximum option would be to claim 30% of the West Bank in line with the Trump administration’s Middle East peace plan. Netanyahu could also pare that back to annexing major settlement blocs, or a symbolic piece of land in the strategic Jordan Valley.
Today more than 400,000 Jewish settlers live inside the West Bank alongside 2.6 million Palestinians, in land Israel captured from Jordan in the 1967 Middle East war. Extension of Israeli sovereignty is widely deplored as a violation of an international treaty forbidding annexation of occupied land. Israel argues it wouldn’t be violating the convention because the territory was never under Palestinian sovereignty.
Nabil Abu Rudeina, an aide to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, has implied retaliation for such a move, saying “there will be no security and stability without giving the Palestinian people their rights.” Security cooperation with Israel has already been halted.
The armed wing of the Gaza Strip’s ruling Hamas group said annexation would be considered “a declaration of war on our people.”
“We will make the enemy bite at its fingers with regret for this decision,” a spokesman said in a video message.
In the dark about when or how annexation might happen, Israeli security forces have been preparing for a range of possible scenarios including high-intensity fighting in the West Bank and Gaza, and reduced cooperation with Egypt and Jordan, according to the official familiar with Israeli defense issues. The military has refrained from exercises in the West Bank to avoid any misunderstandings about Israel’s intentions, the official said.
Whether or not Netanyahu moves ahead may be dependent on developments at the White House. The Trump administration has endorsed annexation within the framework of its peace plan, but Palestinians have flatly rejected the Trump plan as heavily biased in Israel’s favor and refused to negotiate it.
Trump aide Kellyanne Conway said Wednesday that the administration is discussing the West Bank and would have an announcement soon.
A ticking clock could encourage Netanyahu to move quickly. Donald Trump is the only U.S. president to endorse annexation, but he’s running for re-election in November against former Vice President Joe Biden, who opposes it, as do leading Democrats in Congress and many American Jews.
“You have to ask to yourself why do it at this time aside from the fact that Trump is still in power, and a kind of legacy for the prime minister,” said Yarom Ariav, a former Finance Ministry director-general.
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