Netanyahu to annex a third of West Bank if he wins next election

Proposed move would end hopes for a two-state fix to Palestine conflict as Israeli leader panders to the Right

BENJAMIN NETANYAHU said yesterday he would annex a large swathe of the occupied West Bank into Israel if he wins next week’s election, a move that could shatter any lingering hopes of creating a future Palestinian state.

The Israeli prime minister said that if he is re-elected next Tuesday he would move quickly to annex part of the Jordan Valley which forms a strategic strip of land bordering Jordan and constitutes about a third of the West Bank.

The move, if it goes ahead, would fundamentally redraw Israel’s borders and force the international community to ask whether there was any possibility of a two-state solution to the Israelipalestinian conflict.

“I believe we have a unique one-off opportunity to do something for which there is wide consensus to finally create secure, permanent borders for the state of Israel,” Mr Netanyahu said.

“We haven’t had such an opportunity since the Six-day War [in 1967] and I doubt we will have another opportunity in the next 50 years.”

Mr Netanyahu’s announcement was widely seen within Israel as a pre-election stunt to win over Right-wing voters, but many people are left wondering whether he would seriously follow through with it.

He made promises about annexing parts of the West Bank ahead of the last Israeli election in April and did not follow through. However, those pledges were not as detailed as his plan to take the Lower Jordan Valley.

Yesterday evening, Mr Netanyahu was evacuated from a campaign event in the southern city of Ashdod after rockets were fired from Gaza.

He returned to the stage soon after and said: “If Hamas shoots at us in the middle of a Likud event, they probably don’t want us here.”

Mr Netanyahu hinted that Donald Trump had given him the green light for the annexation but did not say so explicitly. He said merely that “diplomatic conditions have ripened” for announcing the move.

There was no immediate comment from the White House.

Saeb Erekat, a senior Palestinian official, said that if Mr Netanyahu went ahead with the annexation “he will have buried any chance for peace for the next 100 years. Israelis and the international community must stop this insanity”.

Mr Trump has been a strong supporter of Mr Netanyahu and handed him a pre-election gift in March by recognising Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights, a strategic plateau captured from Syria in 1967.

However, Mr Netanyahu has appeared rattled in the past week by Mr Trump’s apparent willingness to meet with Hassan Rouhani, the president of Iran.

The US president has said that he is open to such a meeting despite Mr Netanyahu’s repeated warnings against negotiating with Iran.

The Israeli premier’s proposed annexation of the Lower Jordan Valley does not include annexing the city of Jericho, and Palestinians in the area already live under Israeli security control when they move between towns.

But at a diplomatic level, the move could cause the relatively moderate Palestinian Authority to give up on its hopes of establishing a Palestinian state in the West Bank and empower more extreme factions such as Hamas.

‘If this goes ahead he will have buried any chance of peace for the next 100 years’