Netanyahu Vows to Annex West Bank Settlements, by Deborah Danan, 4/7/19,
Breitbart.
TEL AVIV – Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu vowed over the weekend to annex West Bank settlements if he is
reelected in Tuesday’s elections. The incumbent prime minister also said he had
told President Donald Trump that would not evacuate “a single person” from
the 400,000 or so Jews residing in the West Bank.
Palestinian statehood
would “endanger our existence,” Netanyahu told Israel’s Channel 12. When asked
why he hadn’t already extended Israeli sovereignty over settlements, he said, “Who says we won’t do that?
We’re on the way. … The next term will be fateful.” “We’ll go to the next
stage.”
When pushed further,
Netanyahu said: “I am going to apply Israeli sovereignty, but I don’t
distinguish between settlement blocs and isolated settlements. From my
perspective, each of those settlement points is Israeli. We have responsibility
[for them] as the government of Israel. I don’t uproot any, and I won’t
transfer them to the sovereignty of the Palestinians. I take care of them all.”
Netanyahu said he
was talking with the U.S. to ensure that Israeli sovereignty
was extended over the large settlement town of Maale Adumim, among others.
Netanyahu also told a
variety of Israeli outlets, including Channel 13 and the right-wing Makor Rishon and Israel Hayom newspapers,
that he would not evacuate a single person from any of the settlements.
“That will not be
happening,” he told Channel 13. “If that’s the plan, there will be no plan.”
Trump, he said, “is the best friend Israel has had” in
the White House and respects Netanyahu’s red lines. His comments came days
ahead of Tuesday’s national elections, and is a last minute bid to persuade
right-wing voters to vote for Likud rather than smaller parties in the hopes of
making it the largest party in the Knesset and beating out main rival Blue and
White.
According to Channel 13,
Netanyahu believes Trump “would give him backing and legitimization to annex or
extend Israeli law to all West Bank settlements or at least some of the blocs”
if the Palestinian Authority rejects the as-yet unveiled U.S. peace
proposal, as is expected to happen.
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody
GA Tea Party Leader
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