ISRAEL’S education minister and leader of the far right, pro-settlement Jewish Home Party, Naftali Bennett, said yesterday morning he would propose a bill by the end of the month to annex the illegal Israeli settlement of Maale Adumim.
According to Israeli news sites, Bennett said during a government meeting that he expected ‘all the ministers in the government’ to support the proposal. Maale Adumim is the third largest settlement in population size, encompassing a large swath of land deep inside the occupied West Bank. Many Israelis consider it an Israeli suburban city of Jerusalem, despite it being located on occupied Palestinian territory in contravention of international law.
Calls to annex the massive settlement, to pave the way for the annexation of the majority of the occupied West Bank, have gained momentum among Israel’s lawmakers and ministers following last week’s passage of a UN resolution condemning Israeli settlements and reaffirming their clear illegality.
In the days following the resolution’s passing, reports emerged that Israel was advancing plans for hundreds of new settlement units, and Israel’s Jerusalem municipality approved a plan to build a three-story building for Jewish settlers in the heart of the Palestinian neighbourhood of Silwan in occupied East Jerusalem.
Bennett reacted to the UN Security Council’s resolution by calling on Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to rescind his support for the two-state solution and the creation of a Palestinian state, which Bennett perceives to be a security threat to the state of Israel.
‘No resolution can change the fact that this land, Jerusalem, is our capital. And no people can be a conqueror in their own land. That’s why this resolution, like many of the earlier resolutions, will be thrown into the dustbin of history,’ Bennett said.
Following the election of Donald Trump as the next US president, Bennett said that a Trump presidency would mark the end of a push for the establishment of an independent Palestinian state. ‘This is the position of the President-elect, as written in his platform, and it should be our policy, plain and simple. The era of a Palestinian state is over,’ he said.
Netanyahu has warned Bennett and Israeli politicians not to make public declarations related to annexation for fear that the calls would spark further action by the international community and the outgoing Obama administration.
