—Dr. Ramzy Baroud—

Israel is getting ready to annex the 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 — is about to present itself and, from an Israeli point of view, it cannot be missed. “I hope we’ll have a great opportunity with the new US administration to create full normalisation (of the Israeli occupation),” the minister reportedly told Civil Administration staff this month.

This is not the first time that Smotrich, among other Israeli extremists, has made the connection between Donald Trump’s advent to the White House and the illegal expansion of Israel’s borders. Two factors make Israel’s far right optimistic about Trump’s arrival. One, the Israeli experience during Trump’s first term in office, when he unilaterally changed the American position on the legal status of the settlements, the Syrian Golan Heights and Jerusalem. And, two, Trump’s more recent statement in the run-up to the November US elections.

Israel is “so tiny” on the map, Trump said, while addressing the pro-Israeli group Stop Antisemitism at an event in 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 received another boost in recent days. Following the fall of Bashar Assad’s rule in Syria, it immediately began invading large swaths of the country, reaching as far as the Quneitra governorate, less than 20 km away from the capital, Damascus. What is taking place in Syria serves as a model of what to expect in the West Bank in the coming months. Israel occupied nearly 70 per cent 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 Palestinian East Jerusalem the previous year.

Although the West Bank was not formally annexed at that time, the boundaries of East Jerusalem have expanded well beyond the city’s historic borders, thus swallowing large parts of the West Bank. The West Bank, like East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, is recognised as illegally occupied territory under international law. Israel has no legal basis to maintain its occupation, let alone annex any Palestinian or Arab region. It is allowed to do so, however, due to US-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 over the past 14 months without any international intervention will make the annexation of the West Bank a far less consequential matter on the global agenda.

Even though the International Court of Justice in July issued a decisive ruling on the illegality of the Israeli occupation, followed by the issuing of arrest warrants against top Israeli leaders by the International Criminal Court in November, no action has been 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 with direct US support.

With all this in mind, the annexation of the West Bank in the coming weeks or months is a real possibility. In fact, Smotrich has 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 6 December.

While such an annexation would not change the legal status of the West Bank, it would have dire consequences for the millions of Palestinians living there, as annexation would likely be followed by a violent campaign of ethnic cleansing, if not from the whole of the West Bank, then certainly from large parts of it. Annexation would also render the Palestinian Authority legally irrelevant. It was created following the Oslo Accords to administer parts of the West Bank in anticipation of future sovereignty for the Palestinian people, which never actualised. Would 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, would overstretch the Israeli military, which would likely use an unprecedented degree of violence to suppress Palestinians. It is unlikely it would succeed. Annexing the West Bank at a time when Palestine and, in fact, the whole region is in turmoil is a recipe for perpetual war. From the viewpoint of Smotrich and his ilk, this is the actual “great opportunity, ” as it will secure their political survival for years to come.

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The writer is a journalist and author. He is editor of The Palestine Chronicle and nonresident senior research fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs

Courtesy: Arab News