The keys of the Israeli annexation of the West Bank

This Wednesday, 1 July, according to the government agreement, Israel can start implementing the plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank territory, in coordination with the United States. What is known about the annexation plan? If carried out, it would be the third Israeli annexation of areas it occupied in 1967, following the absorption of East Jerusalem in 1980 and the Syrian Golan Heights in 1981. In other words, the second, next to the Holy City, of a territory that the Palestinians claim as part of their future state. 

Israel has occupied the West Bank militarily since 1967. The Oslo Accords (1993-95), the last negotiating framework with the Palestinians, temporarily divided the administration of this territory between zone A (under Palestinian control), B (shared control) and C (Israeli control). 

More than two decades later, the division continues and Israel has built infrastructure and settlements where today more than 420,000 Israelis reside throughout the so-called zone C, 62% of the West Bank (Judea and Samaria by its biblical term for Jews). This area is now administered by the Israeli Army, which patrols the area and also handles civil affairs.  

The annexation plans seek to extend Israel's civil legislation to part of these residential areas in addition to the Jordan Valley region bordering Jordan. 

The peace initiative presented in January by the US administration of Donald Trump proposes to allow the annexation of up to 33% of the West Bank, in area C. The suggested map includes the strategic and fertile Jordan Valley and part of the Israeli settlements. 

Last minute discussions suggest that the territory to be annexed could be reduced in a first step. International warnings and opposition from settlers for being surrounded by Palestinian areas forced Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to rethink the map being drawn by a joint Israeli-US committee. 

In the early hours of this July 1st deadline, the final mapping and the deadlines for the annexation were unknown. The annexation could be carried out in phases, starting with the large settlement blocks surrounding Jerusalem like Maale Adumin. 

Under international law, an annexation is the acquisition by force of a territory occupied by the occupying power, in this case Israel. While military occupation is regulated as a temporary situation, annexation is prohibited and could constitute a "war crime", warn international law experts. The transfer of the civilian population of the occupying power into occupied territory - that is, the establishment of colonies - is also prohibited by the Fourth Geneva Convention. 

The annexation of the Israeli settlements does not contemplate absorbing the adjacent areas, with Palestinian population, which would remain as part of a future State of Palestine. 

However, the proposal to annex the entire valley, an extensive area of crops and water resources parallel to the Jordan River, raises the question of what will happen to the Palestinian population residing there, some 56,000 people. ​​​​​​​

In theory, Netanyahu rules out absorbing the main urban areas of the valley (in areas A - such as Jericho - and B) and also refuses to offer citizenship to the rest of the Palestinians - many of them Bedouins - in area C who could obtain a residence permit, as happened with the population of East Jerusalem after its annexation in 1980. 

The proposal for annexation has as its counterpart in the US peace plan the creation of a Palestinian state. However, the Palestinians reject a map that presents a fragmented state without the external borders of the Jordan Valley.

The UN, the Arab League and the head of European diplomacy, Josep Borrell, as well as many heads of state and government and foreign ministers, have called on Israel to abandon the plan and warned of the implications for regional peace, while the United States remains willing to push for it despite almost unanimous opposition from the international community. 

France warned that such a serious decision cannot remain unanswered; the United Kingdom, one of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, also underlined its opposition and today its Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, advanced that his country "will not recognize any change in the 1967 borders". 

Amnesty International believes that the annexation will promote "the law of the jungle", while many local and international NGOs have expressed concern about the dangerous precedent it would set and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, said: "The annexation is illegal".

Even if Israel delays the official start of the annexation, Netanyahu has shown his determination to go ahead with a plan that he has included in his election campaigns, before Washington approved his Vision of Peace and Prosperity. It is a strategy that corresponds to historic demands of the Israeli right and far-right. The meetings of the mapping committee created by Israel and the United States to define the parties to be annexed continue and, according to Netanyahu, will continue in the coming days.