The ruling Likud Party’s central committee has unanimously endorsed a resolution calling for the annexation of Israeli West Bank settlements. Although the committee is only an advisory body, its decisions reflect the prevailing opinions in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s party. — www.washingtonpost.com/...
Reuters and the Jerusalem Post are also carrying the story. It is important to note that the vote (on what is effectively the party platform) was unanimous. This is not an empty party vote either. Israel’s Attorney General has already issued directions to all government offices requiring them to spell out how rules apply to the illegal West Bank settlements.
The wording of the resolution states: “On the 50th anniversary of the liberation of the regions of Judea and Samaria [the West Bank], including Jerusalem our eternal capital, the Likud Central Committee calls on the Likud’s elected officials to act to allow free construction and to apply the laws of Israel and its sovereignty to all liberated areas of Jewish settlement in Judea and Samaria.”
Most of the Likud ministers in the government support the resolution. — www.haaretz.com/...
Likud led governments have ruled Israel for 30 of the past 40 years, and this is not an accidental decision. It is the eventual result of half a century and more of concerted Israeli policy (supported by both left-wing and right-wing governments) to dispossess Palestinians of their land. Israeli governments have been working to erase Palestine for decades, sometimes quietly, sometimes loudly, but always working to destroy Palestinian homes, evict Palestinian residents, and take Palestinian resources at the point of a gun or missile.
In the Trump era, it is clear that the Israeli government feels emboldened to take as much Palestinian property and resources as it can by force.
Mr. Netanyahu has publicly said that he supports a two-state solution even as his government has expanded settlements on the occupied West Bank. But Mr. Trump’s support has tilted the scales, leading members of Mr. Netanyahu’s government to conclude that Israel can take a stronger position without fear of forceful foreign intercession.
“The map of external pressures has changed dramatically,” said Menachem Klein, a political scientist at Bar-Ilan University. “Instead of Obama, we have Trump. The European Union is divided, Brexit occupies the British agenda, Germany has coalition problems. There’s no consensus in Europe, no single policy putting pressure on Israel. So this is a very easy arena in which we can go ahead.” [...]
If such a measure became law, it would effectively annex Israeli settlements on land that the Palestinians demand for a future state and leave them with an archipelago of disconnected territory. The West Bank is now under military jurisdiction, though settlers are subject to civilian law, as Israeli citizens. — www.nytimes.com/...
The NY Times is being characteristically easy on Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli government. They seem to have forgotten their own story from the 2015 election, where they reported this:
Under pressure on the eve of a surprisingly close election, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel on Monday doubled down on his appeal to right-wing voters, declaring definitively that if he was returned to office he would never establish a Palestinian state.
The statement reversed Mr. Netanyahu’s endorsement of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in a 2009 speech at Bar Ilan University, and fulfilled many world leaders’ suspicions that he was never really serious about peace negotiations. — www.nytimes.com/...
When Netanyahu won the 2015 election after making that statement, I wrote a diary here: Elections have consequences: Netanyahu just won a mandate to kill the two-state process.
This has been a long time coming, but perhaps it will open a few more eyes. There are still some who continue to believe that center-left (Labor) Israeli parties wish to, and could deliver on a two-state solution. The fact is that the center-left has never had the will to do so. West Bank settlements began under the center-left government of Levi Eshkol, they continued under every Labor leader since, including Golda Meir (who repeatedly claimed Palestinians were “not a people”), Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres and Ehud Barak. It was under a Labor government that a plan was created to build settlements across the West Bank. It was a Labor government that developed the subterfuge of establishing “military outposts” that were then turned over to settlers.
So no, there is no center-left Israeli party that is a “partner for peace” or a “partner for a two-state solution”. In fact, Labor governments have, while in power and out of it, worked to further settlements and undermine Palestinian hopes of a sustainable state.
So now we have it, the dreams of the center-left, center-right and far-right are close to realization. The prospect of any Palestinian state is being conclusively closed. What that leaves is a naked apartheid-like regime, no longer interested in maintaining the elaborate smoke and mirrors it has previously employed to mask its naked aggression towards Palestinians.
The NY Times is also reporting on a bill being debated in the Knesset which would change Jerusalem’s municipal borders and remove certain Palestinian neighborhoods from the city.
“What it actually means is the establishment of the first Bantustans of Israel,” said Ms. Ofran of Peace Now. “Like in South Africa — they said, ‘They have their own townships, they run independently, run their own services,’ while having actually zero resources to do that. We have Jerusalem, a poor city but with huge capacities, a huge budget, the national government’s help, and now you’re telling us that if you throw them away, they can do by themselves.
“It’s a lie,” she added. “It’s doing exactly what they had in the apartheid regime.” — www.nytimes.com/...