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bezalel smotrich
Israel Sees Trump's Victory as a 'Great Opportunity' to Annex the West Bank
While such annexation will not change the legal status of the West Bank, it will have dire consequences for the millions of Palestinians living there, as it is likely to be followed by a violent campaign of ethnic cleansing.
Dec 20, 2024
Israel is getting ready to annex the occupied Palestinian West Bank. The annexation will be a major step backward on the road to Palestinian freedom and will likely serve as a catalyst for a new Palestinian uprising.
Though annexation has been on the Israeli agenda for years, this time around a "great opportunity"—in the words of extremist Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich—has presented itself and, from an Israeli point of view, cannot be missed.
"I hope we'll have a great opportunity with the new U.S. administration to create full normalization (of the Israeli occupation)," the minister was quoted as saying by Israeli media.
Israel feels that its ability to sustain a genocidal war on Gaza without any international intervention to bring the extermination to an end, would make the annexation of the West Bank a far less consequential matter on the international agenda.
This is not the first time that Smotrich, among other Israeli extremists, has made the connection between President-elect Donald Trump's advent to the White House and the illegal expansion of Israel's borders.
Two reasons make Israel's far-right optimistic about Trump's arrival: One, the Israeli experience during Trump's first term in office, when the U.S. president allowed Israel to claim sovereignty over illegal settlements, the Syrian Golan Heights, and occupied East Jerusalem; and, two, Trump's more recent statement in the run-up to the elections.
Israel is "so tiny" on the map, Trump said while addressing the pro-Israeli group Stop Antisemitism at an event last August, wondering: "Is there any way of getting more?" The statement, absurd by any definition, caused joy among Israeli politicians, who understood it to be a green light for further annexations.
Israel's aims for colonial expansion also received a boost in recent days. Following the fall of Bashar al-Assad's rule in Syria, Israel immediately began invading large swathes of the country, reaching as far as the Quneitra governorate.
What is taking place in Syria serves as a model of what to expect in the West Bank in coming months.
Israel had occupied nearly 70% of the Syrian Golan Heights in 1967. It cemented its illegal occupation of the Arab region by formally annexing it in 1981 through the so-called Golan Heights Law.
That illegal move came shortly after another illegal annexation, that of occupied Palestinian East Jerusalem the previous year.
Although the West Bank was not formally annexed, the boundaries of East Jerusalem expanded well beyond its historic borders, thus swallowing large parts of the West Bank.
The West Bank, like East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, are all recognized as illegally occupied territories under international law. Israel has no legal basis to maintain its occupation, let alone annexation of any Palestinian or Arab region. It is allowed to do so, however, due to U.S.-Western support and international silence.
But why is Israel keen on annexing the West Bank now?
Aside from the "great opportunity" linked to Trump's return to power, Israel feels that its ability to sustain a genocidal war on Gaza without any international intervention to bring the extermination to an end, would make the annexation of the West Bank a far less consequential matter on the international agenda.
Even though the International Court of Justice (ICJ) had issued a decisive ruling on the illegality of the Israeli occupation on July 19, followed by the issuing of arrest warrants of top Israeli leaders by the International Criminal Court (ICC) on November 21, no action was taken to hold Israel accountable. The annexation of the West Bank is unlikely to change that, especially as Israel conducts its wars and illegal actions through direct U.S. support.
Indeed, the Democratic administration of U.S. President Joe Biden has financed and supported all Israeli wars, including the current genocide. Trump is expected to be equally generous, or at least, not at all critical.
All of this in mind, the annexation of the West Bank in the coming weeks or months is a real possibility.
In fact, Smotrich had already informed "workers of the Defense Ministry body in charge of Israeli and Palestinian civil affairs in the West Bank" about his plans to "shut down the department as part of an envisioned Israeli annexation of the area," The Times of Israel reported on December 6.
While such annexation will not change the legal status of the West Bank, it will have dire consequences for the millions of Palestinians living there, as annexation is likely to be followed by a violent campaign of ethnic cleansing, if not from the whole of the West Bank, certainly from large parts of it.
Annexation will also render the Palestinian Authority legally irrelevant—as it was created following the Oslo Accords to administer parts of the West Bank in anticipation of a future sovereignty, which never actualized. Will the PA agree to remain functional as part of the Israeli military administration of a newly annexed West Bank?
Palestinians will certainly resist, as they always do. The nature of the resistance will prove critical in the success or failure of the Israeli scheme. A popular Intifada, for example, will overstretch the Israeli military, which will likely use an unprecedented degree of violence to suppress Palestinians but will be unlikely to succeed.
Annexing the West Bank at a time that Palestine—in fact, the whole region—is in turmoil is a recipe for perpetual war, which, from the viewpoint of Smotrich and his ilk, is the actual "great opportunity," as it will secure their political survival for years to come.
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Emboldened by Trump Win, Israeli Minister Vows West Bank Annexation in 2025
"I have no doubt that President Trump, who showed courage and determination in his decisions during his first term, will support the state of Israel in this move."
Nov 12, 2024
Anticipating even greater U.S. support following Republican President-elect Donald Trump's White House return in January, far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich on Monday ordered officials to prepare to illegally annex the occupied West Bank of Palestine in 2025.
"The year 2025 will be, with God's help, the year of sovereignty in Judea and Samaria," Smotrich told members of his Religious Zionist Party. "The only way to remove the threat of a Palestinian state from the agenda is to apply Israeli sovereignty over the settlements in Judea and Samaria."
Judea and Samaria is the biblical name for the West Bank and is used by proponents of annexation and the creation of a Greater Israel, which would include all of Palestine, Jordan, and Lebanon and parts of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iraq, and Turkey.
"The year 2025 will be, with God's help, the year of sovereignty in Judea and Samaria."
"I have no doubt that President Trump, who showed courage and determination in his decisions during his first term, will support the state of Israel in this move," Smotrich said.
On Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—who has repeatedly denied annexationist ambitions during the tenure of U.S. President Joe Biden—signaled that annexation would be back on the agenda in light of Trump's victory, according to Israeli state broadcaster Kan.
Smotrich said Monday that he has directed officials in the Ministry of Defense and Civil Administration "to actually prepare the necessary infrastructure for applying sovereignty" to the lands Israel has occupied and colonized after invading and conquering the West Bank and other Palestinian territories in 1967.
Israel's occupation and settlements are illegal under international law including the Fourth Geneva Convention. The International Court of Justice in The Hague—which is also weighing a Gaza genocide case against Israel—in July issued an advisory opinion affirming that the 57-year occupation is illegal and a form of apartheid.
Smotrich declared his intention to work "with the new administration of President Trump and with the international community to implement Israeli sovereignty in Judea and Samaria."
In a swipe at the Biden administration—which has approved tens of billions of dollars in U.S. military aid for Israel and provided diplomatic cover for its war on Gaza and against Palestinian statehood—Smotrich said Monday that "we were on the verge of applying sovereignty over settlements in Judea and Samaria" during Trump's first term. "Now, it's time to act," he asserted.
While Netanyahu's government may find a willing partner in Trump—who calls himself "the best friend Israel has ever had"—most of the rest of the world is staunchly opposed to Israeli annexation. Nearly 150 nations recognize Palestinian statehood; in May, the United Nations General Assembly voted 143-9 to upgrade Palestine's U.N. status to observer state.
In September, European Union foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell warned that "not only is there no pause in the war in Gaza, but what looms on the horizon is the extension of the conflict to the West Bank, where radical members of the Israeli government—Netanyahu's government—try to make it impossible to create a future Palestinian state."
Israel has already unilaterally annexed East Jerusalem and the Syrian Golan Heights. While the U.N. and most countries' governments consider these moves—and Israeli settlements in the annexed territories—unlawful, the first Trump administration recognized them as legal. In February, the Biden administration reversed the so-called "Pompeo doctrine" and reverted to the State Department's legal opinion from 1978-2019: that settlements are inconsistent with international law.
Netanyahu has openly boasted about thwarting the so-called "two-state solution" and has repeatedly advocated full Israeli control of Palestine.
"From every area we evacuate we have received terrible terror against us. It happened in southern Lebanon, it happened in Gaza, and also in Judea and Samaria," the prime minister said earlier this year. "The state of Israel needs security control over all territory west of the Jordan River. Israel has to control the entire area from the river to the sea."
More than 700,000 Jewish settlers have colonized the West Bank since 1967, according to Israeli estimates.
Settlers often destroy property and attack Palestinians, sometimes in mobs that carry out deadly pogroms, in order to terrorize them into fleeing so their land can be stolen. As the world's attention is focused on Gaza, Israeli soldiers and settlers have killed more than 900 Palestinians including over 200 children in the West Bank since January 2023, according to the most recent figures from the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
Last month, Smotrich and other far-right senior Israeli officials including National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir spoke at a conference advocating for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza—which numerous critics say is already underway—to make way for Jewish recolonization of the embattled coastal enclave.
Proponents pointed to West Bank settlements as the example to emulate. But Smotrich has even greater ambitions.
"It is written," he said in a recent interiew, "that the future of Jerusalem is to expand to Damascus."
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'If It Looks Like Ethnic Cleansing, It Probably Is,' Says Israeli Newspaper of North Gaza Siege
"If this process doesn't stop immediately, hundreds of thousands of people will become refugees, entire communities will be destroyed and the moral and legal stain of this crime will cling to and pursue every Israeli."
Oct 30, 2024
The editors of Israel's oldest newspaper on Wednesday published an editorial decrying the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from northern Gaza amid a ferocious Israeli offensive there that's killed more than 1,000 people over the past three weeks.
"For three and a half weeks, Israeli forces have been besieging the northern Gaza Strip," the editors of the left-wing newspaper Haaretz wrote in Wednesday's lead editorial. "Israel has almost completely blocked the entry of humanitarian aid, thereby starving the hundreds of thousands of people who live there. Information emerging from the besieged area is only partial, because ever since the war began, Israel has barred journalists from entering Gaza."
"Israel says it told the residents that they needed to leave northern Gaza, and even now, they can still move southward on routes the army has designated for this purpose," the editors noted. "Thus the residents, many of whom have already been uprooted two or three times or even more from the places to which they have fled the terrors of war, are now being asked to move again. Yet Israel has refrained from giving the displaced any guarantee that they will be able to return once the war ends."
"Given this," they added, "it's no wonder that grave suspicions have arisen that Israel is effectively perpetrating ethnic cleansing in northern Gaza and that this operation is intended to permanently empty this area of Palestinians."
"This suspicion fits with both the principles of the 'Generals' Plan' being pushed by Maj. Gen. (Res.) Giora Eiland—a plan Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has denied implementing—and the demands of the Jewish supremacist parties in the governing coalition that are openly pursuing a policy of mass expulsions and the renewal of Jewish settlement in northern Gaza," the editorial states.
Last week, senior Israeli officials including members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Cabinet and far-right Knesset lawmakers gathered near the Gaza border for a conference dedicated to the ethnic cleansing of Arabs and Jewish recolonization in the embattled Palestinian enclave.
"We came here with one clear purpose: to settle the entire Gaza Strip... Every inch from north to south," settler leader Daniella Weiss told attendees of the rally, which was backed by Netanyahu's Likud party. "Each of you will witness how Jews go to Gaza and Arabs will disappear from Gaza."
As the Haaretz editors noted:
Ethnic cleansing is both a moral crime and a legal one. Criminal law treats mass expulsions as both a war crime and a crime against humanity. Horrifyingly, some members of Benjamin Netanyahu's government want to commit these crimes. As soon as the war began, they began calling for "erasing Gaza" and for perpetrating a "second Nakba." But many Israelis made light of such statements, and the law enforcement system, headed by Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara, refrained from dealing with this incitement to commit crimes.
Now, we can see the results: Israel is sliding into ethnic cleansing; its soldiers are carrying out the criminal policies of the messianic, Kahanist right; and even the opposition on the center and center-left isn't making a peep. This consensus behind ethnic cleansing is shameful, and every public leader who doesn't demand an end to the de facto expulsion is supporting this crime and has become a party to it.
"If this process doesn't stop immediately," the editors stressed, "hundreds of thousands of people will become refugees, entire communities will be destroyed and the moral and legal stain of this crime will cling to and pursue every Israeli."
Israel was founded in 1948, largely through the ethnic cleansing of more than 750,000 Arabs from Palestine during the Nakba, or "catastrophe." Zionist militias—the two most violent of which were led by future Israeli prime ministers—utilized terror tactics including massacres and a death march to force the Indigenous Arabs from their homeland.
Israeli ethnic cleansing continued over the following eight decades and, according to critics, currently involves home demolitions and expulsions in the illegally occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, systematic land theft, and pogroms and other violent attacks by Jewish settler colonists backed—and sometimes joined—by Israel Defense Forces troops.
United Nations officials and international human rights groups said this week's Knesset vote to ban the life-saving U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) will exacerbate Israeli crimes in Gaza, including ethnic cleansing.
"Efforts to eliminate UNRWA are illegal under international law and will only amplify the genocide and ethnic cleansing Israel is enacting in Gaza while also undermining long-term prospects for peace," the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker group, said Tuesday. "The Israeli government is not only deliberately blocking humanitarian and medical aid to people who are starving and dying, it is undermining support for Palestine refugees and the international legal framework protecting their rights."
On Monday, Francesca Albanese, the U.N.'s special rapporteur on Palestine, published a
report "contextualizing the situation within
a decadeslong process of territorial expansion and ethnic cleansing aimed at liquidating the Palestinian presence in Palestine."
Albanese's report was released a day after Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich—who supports the "total annihilation" of Gaza and said that killing 2 million Palestinians would be "justified and moral"—reiterated his call for Israeli annexation of the entire West Bank and the expulsion of the occupied territory's Palestinians.
Israel's policies and practices in Gaza—where more than 150,000 Palestinians have been killed or wounded by Israeli forces since the Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7, 2023—are the subject of an ongoing South Africa-led genocide case before the International Court of Justice in The Hague.
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