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

Israeli Prime Minister speaks before entering the courtroom on 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 an end to security cooperation with Israel and its ally the United States in protest at the territorial plan.

Netanyahu has pledged to bring Jewish settlements and the Jordan Valley in the West Bank into Israeli territory. He has set July 1 as the date to start 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 not yet expressed a clear stance on the actual annexation.

At a meeting of lawmakers from his right-wing Likud party on May 25, Netanyahu identified moves related to land in the West Bank as “perhaps the most important in many aspects” 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 carefully as a diplomatic step in the West Bank,” he said. “It is a huge opportunity and we will not let it slip away.”

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. 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.