Seven days before Israeli elections, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu unveiled his campaign promises that he would include the Jordan Valley in the West Bank, a large piece of Palestinian land. "I announce today my intention if the next government is formed to impose Israeli sovereignty over the Jordan Valley or the Jordan Valley in the north of the Dead Sea," Netanyahu said at a surprise news conference on September 10. "This will be the first step if you get your trust." "This is the eastern border of the state of Israel. "This is our vital security belt. It is a defensive wall that ensures that we will not be a state of a few kilometers."
Israeli voters from across the political spectrum criticized the proposal as a mere idea. A Palestinian resident of the area, Hassan Muammar, told National Interest magazine that he had never heard of the Israeli proposal. "There is nothing new," he said, but the Palestinian Authority warned that Netanyahu's actions could undermine any Israeli-Palestinian peace deal.
Israel captured the land from Jordan in the 1967 war, halting the decades-long Palestinian uprising, but the 1993 Oslo accords allowed the Palestinian Authority to rule almost entirely in Palestinian-controlled cities and towns in the occupied territories. The Israeli army retained Area C, a rural area inhabited by hundreds of thousands of Israeli settlers. Netanyahu's proposal is aimed at taking over C-settlements in the Jordan Valley. The Palestinian-majority city of Hebron will remain under Palestinian Authority rule, and no single Palestinian will be annexed with the land to be annexed, he said. "But annexing the Jordan Valley or Jordan Valley will deprive the Palestinian Authority of the only border areas it has.
"The international community must act now to prevent Netanyahu and his allies from burying the remaining features of the peace process and a viable Palestinian state," said chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat. "Israel's plan to annex the Jordan Valley is an integral part of the Occupied Palestinian Territories, an illegal act that adds to Israel's long history of violations of international law."
The Arab League unanimously condemns Netanyahu's announcement that it will annex the settlements and Jordan Valley in the occupied West Bank so that it kills all chances for peace, for electoral purposes, a move by the Jordanian embassy in the United States. "It is irresponsible and dangerous, and the international community must openly declare that it rejects such absurd attempts to perpetuate the occupation."
Netanyahu's move complicated US President Donald Trump's attempts to broker a peace deal between Israelis and Palestinians, which has now been delayed by the resignation of presidential envoy Jason Greenblatt. "There is no change in US policy at the moment," a State Department official told the National Interest magazine. "We will present our view of peace after the Israeli elections. We will work out the best ways to bring security, opportunity and stability to the region that has long needed this demand." far".
Israeli voters believe the proposal is not important because it is unlikely to be implemented. "Even Netanyahu's language has turned out to be a ruse," said Sam Sokol, a journalist based in occupied Jerusalem. "However, I think it's hard for him to do what he said."
Mohammad Darwish, a nonprofit institute aimed at coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians, described the Netanyahu election campaign as "liquidation" and said he was ready to make any cuts and ridiculous concessions. "There is no need to take this proposal seriously at this stage," said Mohammed, a former director of the United Arab List representing Palestinian citizens in the Israeli Knesset.
"His main competitions are with the right, so he tries to show potential voters that he can do what they want," said Elizabeth Tsurkov of the Foreign Policy Research Institute.
Netanyahu fought a bitter contest with his far-right rival, Elit Shaked. Last week, Shaked pre-empted Netanyahu's commemoration of a 1929 "massacre of Jews" in the Palestinian city of Hebron, and challenged him to seize Jewish-owned property from the "mayor of the city." "The application of Israeli sovereignty over the Jordan Valley is a sensitive issue for strategic depth and Israeli security," Netanyahu's spokeswoman, Likud Rachel Broeld, said in response to a question from National Int. The only way the Likud can do this is that we got the mandate to form a government coalition. "I tell all those who want a right-wing government to vote for the Likud."
"Be religious and I believe that Israeli land and all the lands given to the Jewish people should be controlled by the Jews and should be part of Israel," said Nadav Neumann, who grew up in Area C and plans to elect right-wing parties. I believe that anyone living there, whether Jewish, Muslim or Christian, should be given the same rights, as well as the same duties as long as they are cooperative citizens and part of the state. ”
But the announcement of the annexation of the Jordan Valley very close to Election Day may not convince voters of annexation that Netanyahu is serious about implementing their goals. "Politics is politics," Newman, who now lives in occupied Jerusalem, told National Int. Quite frankly, it is not so easy for Netanyahu to tell us that I will make this region part of Israel. I think he knows that if he is unable to establish a stable government and does not collapse within a few weeks or a month, he has to do something that appeals to the Israeli people. ”
Matteo Beatty National Security Correspondent
Netanyahu's plan also targets the Palestinian president
Netanyahu's plan also targets Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who last week ordered the Palestinian Authority to encourage unauthorized Palestinian construction in Area C. "We have seen an increase in the presence of settlements in our area after statements by Mahmoud Abbas, including from Area C, which was still under Palestinian control," said Muammar, who lives in the village of Battir outside Bethlehem. It is part of Area C. "I started talking to one of these settlers there and said they wanted to plant olive trees," he said. Muammar said the new olive plantation was built on land owned by the Qaisia family.
On August 26, IDF vehicles destroyed a nearby house and a restaurant belonging to a local family called the Kaysia family. The coordinator of government activities in the Palestinian territories, the only military that runs Area C, insisted the buildings were built without permits. The Kaysia family fought a legal battle with a group of Israelis who claim to have bought the land in 1969.
Muammar said the conflict on the ground had caught the attention of all the Palestinian Christian community, including the visit of Archbishop Theodos Atallah Hanna, the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem. In a video recording of the destruction of the house, a member of the Qaisia family showed someone protesting and screaming for "protection of the land." "We will resist this occupation at all levels of the courts in Israel, and we will win round after round until they are unable to confront us judicially," the Qaisia family said in a September 3 statement on the family's Facebook page.
In practice, Area C is now "under Israeli sovereignty," he concluded. "Maybe there will be additional new legal systems, so that we can lose access to the rest of this area, but the situation is now under Israeli control."