Cabinet ministers in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party called on Wednesday for Israel to annex the Israeli-occupied West Bank before the Knesset recesses at the end of the month.
They issued a petition ahead of Netanyahu’s meeting next week with US President Donald Trump, where discussions are expected to center on a potential 60-day Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal with Hamas.
The petition was signed by 15 cabinet ministers and Amir Ohana, speaker of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament.
There was no immediate response from the prime minister’s office. Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer, long a confidant of Netanyahu, did not sign the petition. He has been in Washington since Monday for talks on Iran and Gaza.
“We ministers and members of Knesset call for applying Israeli sovereignty and law immediately on Judea and Samaria,” they wrote, using the biblical names for the West Bank captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war.
Their petition cited Israel’s recent achievements against both Iran and Iran’s allies and the opportunity afforded by the strategic partnership with the US and support of Trump.
It said the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on Israel demonstrated that the concept of Jewish settlement blocs alongside the establishment of a Palestinian state poses an existential threat to Israel.
“The task must be completed, the existential threat removed from within, and another massacre in the heart of the country must be prevented,” the petition stated.
Most countries regard Jewish settlements in the West Bank, many of which cut off Palestinian communities from one another, as a violation of international law.
With each advance of Israeli settlements and roads, the West Bank becomes more fractured, further undermining prospects for a contiguous land on which Palestinians could build a sovereign state long envisaged in Middle East peacemaking.
Israel’s pro-settler politicians have been emboldened by the return to the White House of Trump, who has proposed Palestinians leave Gaza, a suggestion widely condemned across the Middle East and beyond.
Israeli Likud party ministers urge Netanyahu to annex West Bank
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Israeli Likud party ministers urge Netanyahu to annex West Bank
- The petition was signed by 15 cabinet ministers and Amir Ohana, speaker of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament
Israeli FM urges Jews to move to Israel a week after Sydney attack
- “Today I call on Jews in England, Jews in France, Jews in Australia, Jews in Canada, Jews in Belgium: come to the Land of Israel! Come home!” Saar said
JERUSALEM: Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar called on Sunday for Jews in Western countries to move to Israel to escape rising antisemitism, one week after 15 were shot dead at a Jewish event in Sydney.
“Jews have the right to live in safety everywhere. But we see and fully understand what is happening, and we have a certain historical experience. Today, Jews are being hunted across the world,” Saar said at a public candle lighting marking the last day of the Jewish festival of Hanukkah.
“Today I call on Jews in England, Jews in France, Jews in Australia, Jews in Canada, Jews in Belgium: come to the Land of Israel! Come home!” Saar said at the ceremony, held with leaders of Jewish communities and organizations worldwide.
Since the outbreak of the war in Gaza, sparked by Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, Israeli leaders have repeatedly denounced a surge in antisemitism in Western countries and accused their governments of failing to curb it.
Australian authorities have said the December 14 attack on a Hanukkah event on Sydney’s Bondi Beach was inspired by the ideology of the Islamic State jihadist group.
On Tuesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged Western governments to better protect their Jewish citizens.
“I demand that Western governments do what is necessary to fight antisemitism and provide the required safety and security for Jewish communities worldwide,” Netanyahu said in a video address.
In October, Saar accused British authorities of failing to take action to curb a “toxic wave of antisemitism” following an attack outside a Manchester synagogue on Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, in which two people were killed and four wounded.
According to Israel’s 1950 “Law of Return,” any Jewish person in the world is entitled to settle in Israel (a process known in Hebrew as aliyah, or “ascent“) and acquire Israeli citizenship. The law also applies to individuals who have at least one Jewish grandparent.zz
