Israeli Prime Minister says he will not miss the opportunity to annex the West Bank

Israeli Prime Minister speaks before entering the courtroom for corruption charges on May 24 in Jerusalem. Photo: Reuters

Palestinians see such a move as an illegal annexation of occupied land, which they plan to build the capital of their future state. Last week, the Palestinians announced they would end security cooperation with Israel and its ally the United States in protest at the territorial plan.

Netanyahu has pledged to annex Jewish settlements and the Jordan Valley in the West Bank to Israel. He has set July 1 as the date to begin cabinet discussions on the issue, raising alarm in the European Union.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the issue was complex and required coordination with Washington. Netanyahu's new political partner, centrist Benny Gantz, has yet to make clear his stance on the actual annexation.

At a meeting of lawmakers from his right-wing Likud party on May 25, Netanyahu identified land-related moves in the West Bank as “perhaps the most important in many respects” of the tasks that the government he and Gantz formed on May 17 must carry out.

“We have a historic opportunity, unprecedented since 1948, to exercise sovereignty in a diplomatic manner in the West Bank,” he said. “It’s a huge opportunity and we’re not going to let it go.”

Netanyahu made the statement a day after his trial on corruption charges began. He has denied charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust.

Netanyahu has cited US President Donald Trump’s Israeli-Palestinian peace plan as the basis for de facto annexation. The Palestinians have rejected the proposal, put forward in January, under which most Jewish settlements would be annexed to “adjacent Israeli territory.”

Palestinians and most countries view settlements on land Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war as illegal.