Israel is considering annexing parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank in response to a push from Western countries to recognize a Palestinian state, Axios reported on Sunday.
The Axios report said several options were under consideration when it came to the amount of territory Israel could annex. One official said that Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer told an advisor to French President Emmanuel Macron that Israel could annex all of “Area C,” which is under full Israeli military control and constitutes 60% of the West Bank.
The other options include annexing Israeli settlements and access routes to them, which is about 10% of the Palestinian territory, or annexing the settlements, access roads, and the Jordan Valley, which constitutes about 30% of the Palestinian territory.
US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee told Axios that the US doesn’t yet have a position on the potential Israeli annexation, but the Trump administration has been very supportive of Israel’s actions in the West Bank. “What the Europeans are planning to do started causing more and more people in Israel to say that maybe they should start talking of annexation of parts of Judea and Samaria,” Huckabee said.
The administration has also strongly opposed the push to recognize a Palestinian state and is denying and revoking visas for Palestinian Authority officials so they can’t attend the General Assembly in September, when the Western states are planning to formally recognize Palestine.
Israel has already approved a major expansion of Israeli settlements, which Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has said will “erase” the idea of a Palestinian state. The expansion of settlements amounts to the de facto annexation of the territory they’re built on, but a formal declaration of Israeli sovereignty would further solidify Israel’s hold on the Palestinian land.
