Bezalel Smotrich, Israeli Finance Minister belonging to the far right, promised Monday the annexation in 2025 by Israel of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. During a speech in Parliament, the one who is also responsible for civil management in the West Bank, and therefore the settlements, affirmed that the “creation of a Palestinian state […] would endanger the existence of the State of Israel.
“The only way to eliminate this threat […] is to apply Israeli sovereignty over the settlements of Judea and Samaria,” said Bezalel Smotrich, using the name that Israelis give to the West Bank, Palestinian territory occupied by Israel since 1967.
Himself a settler, the minister specified that he had instructed the administration to organize itself “to prepare the infrastructure necessary for the application of Israeli sovereignty” over the West Bank settlements.
He also said he saw “an opportunity” in Donald Trump’s return to power in the United States. “I have no doubt that President Trump, who demonstrated courage and determination in his decisions during his first term, will support the State of Israel in this endeavor,” he said.
This shock statement comes as, on the same day, the leaders of Arab and Muslim countries called on Israel to completely withdraw from Arab territories occupied since 1967 to achieve a “comprehensive” regional peace.
“A just and comprehensive peace in the region cannot be achieved without putting an end to the Israeli occupation of all the occupied territories,” they said after a summit in Saudi Arabia devoted to the situation in the Middle East.
They base their request on the basis of the borders of “June 4, 1967”, therefore prior to Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Syrian Golan. And this, in accordance with UN resolutions and the 2002 Arab peace plan which stipulates that Israel must return all territories occupied since 1967 in exchange for normalization with Arab countries.
Apart from annexed East Jerusalem, more than 490,000 Israelis live in the West Bank, in colonies that the UN considers illegal under international law, among 3 million Palestinians.
For his part, the Palestinian Minister of Foreign Affairs “condemned in the strongest terms” the remarks of Bezalel Smotrich, symptomatic according to him of a “racist colonialism par excellence” and a “repeated disregard for international law” encouraged by “the international failure to enforce United Nations resolutions relating to the Palestinian question.”
