Israel tells US of unfolding plans to annex West Bank

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar met with his American counterpart Marco Rubio to discuss plans for a complete annexation of the occupied West Bank, Walla reported. 

According to the Israeli news outlet, Saar hinted that his government is quietly heading towards "applying sovereignty" over the Palestinian territory in the coming months. 

Israeli media has reported unanimity among Israel's upper echelon with regards to annexing the West Bank.

Walla reported disagreements in the government about whether the move should be an "ideological step" for Israel to take or a response to the announced upcoming recognition of a Palestinian state at the UN assembly this month by several states such as France and Britain. 

Amid heightened international pressure surrounding the issue of Palestinian statehood, the Israeli parliament approved a motion in July calling for the annexation of the occupied West Bank. The non-binding proposal does not affect the legal status of the West Bank but foreshadowed a possible move on the territory.

Annexation of occupied territory is illegal under international law. The Israeli government prefers to term it as "applying sovereignty", though that makes little difference legally and on the ground.

Since the 1967 Middle East war, Israel has annexed occupied East Jerusalem and the Syrian Golan Heights in moves never recognised by the international community.

Additionally, under the 1995 Oslo Agreement between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation, the West Bank was divided into three areas, with the Palestinian Authority (PA) exerting limited control of areas A and B, and Israel taking full control of Area C, which covers over 60 percent of the territory.

Under international law, the entire territory covering Areas A, B and C is Palestinian land and all Israeli settlements there are illegal. 

US backing of illegal settlements

In mid-August, US ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee told Israeli Army Radio that a "massive" development of settlements in the occupied West Bank was not a violation of international law and the US would not oppose it. 

While Huckabee's comments referred to the occupied Palestinian territory in totality, he also specifically addressed the proposed settlement of the E1 area of occupied Jerusalem.

The E1 project seeks to cut off Palestinian communities between Jerusalem and the Jordan Valley, which includes a historic area known as al-Bariyah, or "the Wilderness of Jerusalem", which Palestine submitted to Unesco's tentative list of heritage sites. 

The isolation of East Jerusalem from parts of the West Bank, which has been likened to South Africa's apartheid system, will force Palestinians to take lengthy detours to travel between several cities and towns. 

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On 14 August, Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s finance minister, declared that he would proceed with the highly controversial project that “buries the idea of a Palestinian state”.

"The Israeli government is openly announcing apartheid," Aviv Tatarsky, a researcher at Israeli rights group Ir Amim, told Middle East Eye at the time. 

"It explicitly states that the E1 plans were approved to 'bury' the two-state solution and to entrench de facto sovereignty. An immediate consequence could be the uprooting of more than a dozen Palestinian communities living in the E1 area."

In recent years, Israel has increasingly displaced Palestinians and moved Israeli settlers into occupied lands, while treating Area C as being under its permanent control. 

Israeli forces - sometimes in cooperation with settlers groups - have uprooted tens of thousands of trees planted by Palestinians, confiscated Palestinian construction equipment and demolished homes and structures.

Meanwhile, a notable escalation in Israeli settler violence has been reported across several areas of the occupied West Bank, the National Bureau for Defending Land and Resisting Settlements warned in a report published over the weekend. 

It noted that the pace of settlement activity has only increased since October 2023, with settlers destroying agricultural land and infrastructure under the protection of Israeli forces.