Netanyahu Vows to Start Annexing West Bank, in Bid to Rally the Right
Source: New York Times
JERUSALEM Struggling to rally right-wing voters before Tuesdays elections, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Saturday that he would start to extend Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank if given a fourth consecutive term.
Such a move has been ardently sought by the settler movement but resisted until now by Mr. Netanyahu, and by more moderate Israelis, as a potentially fatal blow to a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In the eyes of most of the world, it would also be a violation of international law that bars the annexation of land seized in war.
But Mr. Netanyahu trailed his main challenger, Benny Gantz, a former army chief of staff, in final polls of the campaign published Friday. And he has been frantically trying to mobilize conservative Israelis to vote for his Likud party rather than for other, more extremist parties whose leaders have joined his government but have often portrayed him as more of a brake on the settler movement than an accelerator.
Mr. Netanyahu was pressed in a live television interview Saturday night over why he had not already annexed settlement blocs like Maale Adumim and Gush Etzion, two large Jewish communities built on occupied territory on the outskirts of Jerusalem. He vowed to begin the effective annexation of those and other, more isolated areas under Jewish control.
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/06/world/middleeast/netanyahu-annex-west-bank.html
I love the smell of desperation in the morning.
marylandblue
(12,344 posts)Last edited Sat Apr 6, 2019, 09:19 PM - Edit history (1)
Last time he was losing in the polls, he pandered to the hard right and won.
ck4829
(35,076 posts)fascisthunter
(29,381 posts)sandensea
(21,635 posts)Except, of course, this one doesn't have to worry about any Desert Storm pushing him back from illegally occupied land.
Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin
(107,985 posts)catbyte
(34,386 posts)The question is "will" we?
Scarsdale
(9,426 posts)crook? Does this mean Israel is lowering their standards to a level the US has, to keep a "sub-par" leader in office? Have they not seen what is happening to the US under a crook? Of course, tRump has the entire crooked gop party propping him up. I hope to live to see the day when tRump, his entire family and the gop all regret ever having him waddle onto the national stage. Rip off all the covers, show him for the slimebag he is.
rockfordfile
(8,702 posts)YOHABLO
(7,358 posts)Initech
(100,075 posts)Maybe Rupert Murdoch too.
ProudLib72
(17,984 posts)No further comment.
atreides1
(16,079 posts)If he follows through, what exactly happens to the 3 million Palestinian Arabs currently living in the West Bank?
Does the Israeli government forcefully remove them and place them in Gaza, or just ships them out to the desert and leaves them stranded?
Perhaps the Israeli government will just kill any Palestinian that refuses to leave what has been home for decades, if not centuries!
Are the Israelis willing to use the same methods that were used on European Jews, to remove them?
Will those who were oppressed become as evil as those who once oppressed them?
Lots of questions...and no answers, yet!!!
brooklynite
(94,553 posts)He's planning to claim that the Israeli settlements already in the West Bank (which, obviously, don't have any Palestinians in them) are now part of Israeli territory. They already are effectively (fenced off from Palestinian territory and linked by road to the rest of Israel. It's a matter of legal status.
Mosby
(16,311 posts)Last edited Mon Apr 8, 2019, 12:06 PM - Edit history (1)
Especially in the north.
The large majority of settlers are there for economic reasons, not religious ones.
The price for real estate is nuts in Israel, the houses and Apts being built in the WB have helped stem the rising costs by offering somewhat affordable housing.
Eta https://www.reuters.com/article/us-israel-palestinians-settlements/leave-or-let-live-arabs-move-in-to-jewish-settlements-idUSKBN0JL0D620141207
Blue_Tires
(55,445 posts)until there's nothing left
Aristus
(66,352 posts)If Jonathan Netanyahu were still alive, I wonder what he would be like?