In the heat of a very tight election, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu made a promise designed to attract votes from those Israeli citizens who favor annexing the West Bank, in the same way that Israel has annexed East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights. In a television interview today, Netanyahu said:
“In an interview to Israeli Channel 12 News three days ahead of the April 9 poll, Netanyahu was asked why he had not extended sovereignty to large West Bank settlements, as Israel did without international recognition in east Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, both captured in the 1967 Middle East war.
“’Who says that we won’t do it? We are on the way and we are discussing it,’ Netanyahu said.
“’You are asking whether we are moving on to the next stage – the answer is yes, we will move to the next stage. I am going to extend (Israeli) sovereignty and I don’t distinguish between settlement blocs and the isolated settlements.’”
About 400,000 Israelis live in settlements in the West Bank and they have been lobbying for Israeli annexation. Netanyahu has told US President Trump that Israel would not remove “even one” settler to achieve a US-sponsored peace plan between Israel and the Palestinians. President Trump has been promising a peace plan for over two years, but we have yet to see any specific details. But it is highly unlikely that the Palestinians would agree to any plan that allowed all the Israeli settlers to remain under Israeli control.
Israeli Settlements in the West Bank
Visual Capitalist has a fascinating map which traces the words which accompany the goods that are traded internationally. The Germans have a word–Wanderwörter–for the words that travel and morph along trade routes.
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