(Dave DeCamp, Antiwar.com) Israeli officials have told Axios that US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has signaled in private meetings that the US won’t oppose Israel if it moves to formally annex parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, something Israeli officials are considering doing in response to Western countries planning to recognize a Palestinian state.
US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee previously told Axios that the Trump administration doesn’t yet have an official position on the possibility of annexing territory in the West Bank, but he has also made clear the administration won’t oppose the expansion of illegal Jewish settlements, which amounts to the de facto annexation of the territory they’re built on. Huckabee has also previously suggested that Palestinians in the West Bank could be moved to and that a Palestinian state could be carved out of a Muslim country.
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a West Bank settler himself, proposed a plan on Wednesday for Israel to annex 82% of the Palestinian territory. He said in a statement that the plan aims for “maximum territory and minimum Arab population.”
According to a map Smotrich released, Israel would officially annex the vast majority of the West Bank while leaving six Palestinian population centers as islands that would be separated. The six cities include Ramallah, Nablus, Jenin, Tulkarem, Jericho, and Hebron.
Smotrich said that the Palestinians in the six islands would initially remain under the Palestinian Authority (PA), but then later form local administrations to prevent any sort of unified Palestinian entity in the West Bank.
Smotrich called on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to go through with the annexation. “And you, Mr. Prime Minister, will enter the nation’s history books for generations as a great leader who knew how to seize the moment, take advantage of the opportunity, and save Israel once and for all from the idea of dividing the land and the existential threat euphemistically called a ‘Palestinian state,’” he said.
According to The Times of Israel, Netanyahu is due to hold a meeting of his ministers on Thursday about the possibility of annexing territory in the West Bank in response to Western countries recognizing a Palestinian state.
The UAE warned on Wednesday that the Israeli annexation of the West Bank could undermine the Abraham Accords, under which the UAE normalized relations with Israel in 2020. “We call on the Israeli government to suspend these plans. Extremists, of any kind, cannot be allowed to dictate the region’s trajectory. Peace requires courage, persistence, and a refusal to let violence define our choices,” Lana Nusseibeh, a UAE official, told Reuters.
This article originally appeared at Antiwar.com.
