Benjamin Netanyahu moots settlement annexation as pre-election trump card
Palestinians seeking statehood in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem call his remarks a violation of international law regarding occupied territory
Jerusalem — Palestinians voiced alarm while Israelis weighed the gravity on Sunday of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s sudden election promise to annex Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank. Some Israeli commentators saw the rightwing leader’s pledge, as Tuesday’s national ballot approaches, as mainly a bid to siphon votes from ultranationalist rivals long advocating annexation. But after years of resisting far-right calls to formally put West Bank land captured in the 1967 Middle East war under permanent Israeli hold, Netanyahu could be counting on support for a dramatic shift from his close ally, US President Donald Trump. “Who says that we won’t do it? We are on the way and we are discussing it,” Netanyahu, asked why he had not extended Israeli sovereignty to large West Bank settlements, told Israel’s Channel 12 News. In March, Trump broke with decades of international consensus by recognising Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, territory Israel captured from S...
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