Israeli settlers push back on annexation
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Having crushed his political opponents and won a new term, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has cleared a path to fulfilling his most polarizing campaign promise: annexing occupied West Bank territory, the long-held dream of right-wing Jewish settlers.
Yet with a month until he says he will apply Israeli sovereignty over large stretches of land the Palestinians have counted on for a future state, Netanyahu is facing stiff resistance, including a surprising rebellion in the ranks of the settler leaders who have been agitating for annexation for years.
Netanyahu’s plan, they argue, would open the door for a Palestinian state while ending any expansion of Israeli settlements in much of the West Bank, killing the religious-Zionist project to achieve dominion over the entire biblical homeland of the Jews.
“It’s either or,” Bezalel Smotrich, a firebrand lawmaker who has led the push for annexation, said in an interview. “Either the settlements have a future, or the Palestinian state does — but not both.”
The unexpectedly fierce opposition, coupled with mixed signals from the Trump administration, is raising questions about whether Netanyahu will follow through on his annexation pledges after all.
On the left, supporters of a two-state solution have been sounding the alarm for months, saying that unilateral annexation by Israel — which would be condemned by most of the world as a violation of international law — would break its commitments to the Palestinians under prior peace agreements and destroy any hope of a conflict-ending deal.
Current and former Israeli military officials have begun to weigh in, too, warning that annexation could ignite a new wave of violence in the West Bank and force King Abdullah II of Jordan to adopt a hardline stance against Israel, endangering the two nations’ peace treaty.
But it is the emerging opposition among settlers that potentially poses the most disruptive obstacle.
Netanyahu promised annexation in three successive election campaigns over the last year. In January, his promise won the backing of the Trump administration, whose peace plan allows Israel to keep up to 30% of the West Bank, including the Jordan Valley as well as all existing Jewish settlements, which most of the world considers illegal.
There is pressure on Netanyahu to act swiftly. The U.S. presidential election in November could replace Trump with former Vice President Joe Biden, who has spoken out against unilateral annexation. That makes the next several months a window of opportunity that could slam shut, said Oded Revivi, the mayor of the Efrat settlement. “Eat it now, before the ice cream melts,” he said.
But the loudest voices in the settlements — including influential activists, mayors and community leaders — argue that Netanyahu’s vision for annexation amounts to no less than the death knell for religious Zionism.
Citing a yet-to-be published map of the annexation plan Netanyahu is drafting with the Trump administration, these critics say it leaves too many Jewish settlements as disconnected enclaves that would be barred from expanding. And they say it would further isolate them from the rest of Israel, giving the Palestinians control of roads that could turn a 35-minute commute to Jerusalem into a roundabout desert trek of two hours or more.
The result will be the evisceration of the settlements, they argue.
But Netanyahu’s continued push to expand Israeli sovereignty in the West Bank, even when he is on trial for corruption, has led to speculation that he wants to cement his legacy. Annexing the Jordan Valley, on the eastern edge of the West Bank abutting Jordan, would give Israel a permanent eastern border for the first time.