“I will make sure we control the territory west of Jordan,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in the run-up to the election.
Courting Israel’s right-wing parties and voters in the lead-up to parliamentary elections, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made a pledge that threatened to redraw the map of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Israeli settlements in the West Bank have been one of the most obvious—and intractable—obstacles to Mideast peace. Though they are considered illegal under international law, successive Israeli governments have allowed—and even encouraged—their expansion. U.S. complaints and attempted United Nations sanctions have been unable to stop their growth, while the Palestinians cite them as a key obstacle to successful peace negotiations.
Dore Gold, the former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations and now the president of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, told Newsweek that the settlements have always been a key consideration for Israeli governments. “Since Israel put up its first string of settlements in the Jordan Valley under the Labor government after the 1967 war, there has always been a view in Israel that the settlements have a link to Israel's future security,” he explained.
“There could be—but there may not be—this sudden big announcement. It may be more a continued, incremental creeping annexation. There's different ways you could see it happening.” Official recognition of this control by Israel would underline Netanyahu’s opposition to the two-state solution—which formed the basis of the 1993 Oslo Accords—at a time when international condemnation of his policies is softened by Washington’s support. It would be a huge blow to the Palestinian hope for an independent nation under full Palestinian control, a dream that has rarely seemed so distant.
“It's full steam ahead in terms of cementing a one-state or one-space reality, depending on what you want to call it,” Lovatt explained. “It doesn't mean it's the end necessarily of the two-state solution—the future is a long way off—but certainly where we're at now is somewhere very different to where we were 10 years ago.”
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