Netanyahu to annex West Bank if approved by Trump

On the 100th anniversary of the San Remo Resolution, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on US President Donald Trump to support the annexation of the West Bank and the entire Jordan Valley. The coronavirus prevented him from making his statements in the Italian town, where in 1920 World War I winners placed Palestine under the mandate of the United Kingdom, and whose resolution recognized for the first time the right of the Jewish people to establish their national home there.

The leader of the conservative Likud party also signed the agreement for the coalition government with his former adversary Benny Gantz on Monday. This agreement not only specifies the alternation in the prime minister's seat in eighteen months but also Netanyahu's right to present to parliament from July 1st the bills for the annexation of "parts of the West Bank". It is therefore Netanyahu who will have the power to decide when and how this process begins, as well as how it is carried out in view of its alleged final completion. By urging Trump to support him, the Israeli leader is increasing the pressure on the White House's tenant by forcing him to speak out when the race to the elections on November 3 will then be in its prime.

The annexation of these parts of the occupied West Bank corresponds primarily to the numerous Jewish settlements that have sprung up during the successive governments of Netanyahu, with different periods of stagnation while Barack Obama occupied the White House, but resumed with force as soon as Donald Trump succeeded him. The possibility that he will not be re-elected spurs Netanyahu's rush to consummate his historic legacy as the leader who consolidated Israel's sovereignty over the West Bank, as he has done over the Golan Heights, taken from Syria in 1967. The fact that the United Kingdom, France and Germany reiterated their opposition to the annexation of the West Bank will not prevent it should Trump end up supporting it.  

The most conservative arguments, namely that the San Remo Resolution recognised the right of the Jewish people to settle in any part of historic Palestine, and that the mandate given to the UK in 1920 would include both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, are re-emerging and gaining strength. Annexation activists consider this to be a sufficient legal basis for incorporation into the Jewish state.  

The West Bank issue will certainly be at the top of the agenda, once the political uncertainty that Israel would have had to go to the polls for the fourth time in a year has been dispelled. The lifting of the blockade has mainly benefited Netanyahu, who can also show impeccable management of the coronavirus pandemic. In the Deep Knowledge Group's ranking, Israel heads the classification of the 40 safest countries in the world, ahead of Germany, South Korea and Australia (Spain does not appear), as the ones that best manage this global disaster.  

In a short briefing with various officials from the Israeli Ministries of Foreign Affairs, Health and Economy, in which this media participated, it was confirmed the gradual exit from the confinement, the progressive re-launching of the economy and the maintenance of the distance measures. At the same time, Israel will above all intensify its scientific efforts and its cooperation with a number of international laboratories in the search for the desired vaccine and its corresponding treatments.  

There is no doubt that technological progress will take a great leap forward during this crisis, where Israeli leaders see an opportunity for transcendental changes with the creation of new needs and the appearance of new specialities, unknown yesterday and converted tomorrow into an immense job market for the generation that will have the great mission of transforming society. 

Linking it to the question of the West Bank, it is more than doubtful that Netanyahu's project will achieve such a transcendental change. Even if the arguments of his most conspicuous activists are admitted in the debate, the century elapsed since the San Remo Conference still seems too short to be accepted by the Palestinians settled on the West Bank.