West Bank settlers say Netanyahu backtracked them with annexation

MASSUA SETTLEMENT, West Bank (Reuters) – Israeli colonists say Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has deceived them about their long-held dream of annexing the occupied West Bank as part of the country’s normalization agreement with the United Arab Emirates.

Their anger could be a problem for Judge Netanyahu, who accuses them of repeatedly pushing the idea of ​​annexation only to intervene in international pressure when the terms of the UAE deal forced him to return to his promises. .

“He deceived us, deceived us, threatened us,” said David Elhayani, head of the Yesha Council, the colonists’ main umbrella organization.

‘It’s a big disappointment. “It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, a golden opportunity that the Prime Minister misses because he lacks the courage,” Elhayani said. “It simply came to our notice then. He has to go. ”

Israel’s occupations on the West Bank – ranging in size from a few hilltop caravans to scattered shuttles – were built by successive governments imprisoned during a 1967 war.

Some 450,000 Jewish settlers now live among 3 million Palestinians in the West Bank, with another 200,000 settlers in East Jerusalem. Most countries consider the settlements illegal, an opinion that Israel and the United States dispute.

When Netanyahu promised during the last election to assert Israeli sovereignty over West Bank areas, including Jewish settlements, he said he first needed a green light from Washington.

That green light was shown by President Donald Trump’s Mideast plan released in January, and that Israel saw sovereignty – de facto annexation – apply to its 120 settlements in nearly a third of the West Bank.

But when Trump announced the UAE deal this month, he said annexation was now “off the table.”

SOVEREIGNTY

Polls in Israel have shown broad support for the UAE deal. But the ideological colonial leadership has significant political conversion, and has been a long bastion of Netanyahu’s support.

Knowing that Netanyahu was aware that he would lose her support to parties even more hawkish than his own, he tried to keep the colonial hope alive.

“Sovereignty is not on the agenda, I was the one who brought it to the Trump plan with American permission. We will apply sovereignty, “he told Israel Army Radio, adding that the White House had simply asked for a suspension.

But many colonist leaders are not convinced. Bezalel Smotrich, a colonist with the ultranationalist opposition party Yemina, said Netanyahu “has for many years threatened right-wing voters with great success”.

Palestinians seeking their own state in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem have strongly opposed the policies of Trump and his senior adviser Jared Kushner, including their Middle East plan and UAE deal.

They accuse Trump, Kushner and Netanyahu of drafting blueprints that would leave them alone with an unreliable Palestinian state from separate enclaves scattered across the West Bank.

But the Trump vision of limited Palestinian statehood has created strange bedfellows.

The Palestinians say it gives them too little. But for the most hardline Israeli colonists, it gives the Palestinians too much. For these colonists, every Palestinian state is anathema.

In Kedumim’s hilltop settlement, veteran settler leader Daniella Weiss said, “I do not think the Jewish nation should give up one of its treasures, part … of our homeland, for a peace treaty.”

‘I’m a pioneer who set up an outpost, then my kids did it, now my grandchildren do it. This is the dream and this is the plan and this is what our movement is doing. ”