Israel drawing up map for West Bank annexations
10 February, 2020
Israel has begun to draft maps of land in the occupied West Bank which will be annexed relative to U.S. President Donald Trump’s proposed peace plan, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Saturday.
“We already are at the height of the process of mapping the region that, in line with the Trump plan, can be portion of the state of Israel. It won’t take too much time,” Netanyahu said at an election campaign rally in the Maale Adumim settlement.
Netanyahu said the region would include all Israeli settlements and the Jordan Valley - territory Israel has kept under military occupation since its capture in the 1967 Middle East war but which Palestinians want in another state.
“The only map that can be accepted as the map of Palestine may be the map of the Palestinian state on the 1967 borders with Jerusalem as its capital,” said Nabil Abu Rdainah, spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
Prospects for annexations, that have recently been widely condemned, are unclear.
Israel will hold a national election on March 2 and Netanyahu, who's facing criminal corruption charges, is hoping to win a fifth term in office. He presently heads a caretaker government, whose legal authority to annex territory continues to be undecided by judicial authorities.
Settlers make up part of Netanyahu’s right-wing voter base and several members of his coalition cabinet view the West Bank as the biblical heartland of the Jewish people.
Most countries consider Israeli settlements on land captured in war to become a violation of international law. Trump has changed U.S. policy to withdraw such objections.
Palestinians say the settlements make another state non-viable. Israel cites security needs as well as biblical and historical ties to the land which they are built.
Trump’s plan envisages a two-state solution with Israel and another Palestinian state living alongside one another, nonetheless it includes strict conditions that Palestinians reject.
The blueprint gives Israel a lot of what it has long sought, including U.S. recognition of settlements and Israeli sovereignty over the Jordan Valley.
A redrawn, demilitarised Palestinian state will be at the mercy of Israeli control over its security, and would receive tracts of desert in substitution for arable land settled by Israelis.
Right after Trump presented the plan on Jan. 28, Netanyahu said his government would get started extending Israeli sovereignty to the settlements and the Jordan Valley within days.
But Washington then appeared to put the breaks on that and Netanyahu has since faced pressure from settler leaders to annex territory despite any U.S. objections.
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