Trump Enabling Israel’s Illegal Annexation Of The West Bank
On the morning of June 5th, 1967, almost two hundred fighter jets took to the air from locations across Israel. They flew fast and low across both the Mediterranean and Red Seas before adjusting their course for Egypt.
By the time that they returned to base, their surprise attack had destroyed the bulk of the Egyptian air force, including aircraft, airfields, pilots and support crews. Over the following six days, the Israeli military attacked and pushed back the armies of Egypt, Syria and Jordan, seizing the Sinai Peninsula, the Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem in the process.
A surprise attack on Egypt by Israeli fighter jets signaled the start of a wider Israeli invasion of Egypt, Syria and the Jordanian-controlled West Bank.
Five months later, on November 22nd, the United Nation Security Council adopted Resolution 242, calling on Israel to withdraw its forces from all territories it has seized during the Six Day War. This was the first of many such demands from the international community, all of which have been ignored by Israel.
From 1979 onward the United Nations General Assembly, the EU and the US have referred to the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, as occupied Palestinian territory. The International Courts of Justice and even Israel’s own Supreme Court have similarly ruled the West Bank to be Palestinian land under Israeli occupation.
At no point in the 53 year-long occupation of the West Bank has Israel seriously entertained a full withdrawal. Instead it has set about changing the reality on the ground, through the introduction of an apartheid regime for the Palestinian population and through the plantation of Israeli settlers throughout the West Bank - a process of ethnic cleansing by any other name.
There are now roughly 250 Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Close to half of these settlements are ‘recognised’ by the Israeli state, while the remaining ‘outposts’ await Israeli recognition. All are illegal under international law.
It has been estimated that up to 42% of all land within the West Bank is now believed to fall within the jurisdictions of the local councils associated with these 250 illegal settlements.
Israel has illegally built hundreds of thousands of dwellings across the West Bank and East Jerusalem (pictured).
In addition to building new settlements across the West Bank, Israel has also sought to change the demographics of East Jerusalem through the systematic plantation of a loyal Israeli population.
It is estimated that there are are now 465,000 Israeli citizens living in the 250 illegal settlements and a further 215,000 living in East Jerusalem, giving a total that of circa 680,000 Israelis living on seized Palestinian land. This from a figure of effectively zero in 1967.
The plantation of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, has accelerated since Donald Trump won the US election in November 2016. Under Trump, the long-standing US support for Israel has moved onto a whole other level, a fact which the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is exploiting to the full.
Less than a year into his presidency, Trump announced his intention to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, an important political statement which Israel had sought for decades. The US Embassy was subsequently moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, with an official opening ceremony in May 2018.
In October of the same year, the Trump administration merged the de facto Palestinian Consulate General into the main US Embassy, ending a stand-alone diplomatic function that had existed since 1844.
Giant posters of Trump and Netanyahu were erected in Israel as part of Netanyahu’s 2019 re-election campaign.
In the same month that the new US Embassy in Jerusalem was officially opened, Trump announced the the US was unilaterally withdrawing from the Iranian nuclear deal. Collapsing the Iran deal had been close to the top of the Israeli wish-list from the day it was signed.
Trump’s former National Security Advisor, John Bolton, recently revealed that Trump instructed him to tell Netanyahu that the US would back an Israeli military strike against Iran - “You tell Bibi [Netanyahu] that if he uses force, I will back him. I told him that, but you tell him again.”
A year later, in November 2019, Trump's Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo announced that the US was unilaterally shifting its position on Israeli settlements. After half-a-century of deeming them to be illegal, the US was now of the view that they no longer contravened international law. No meaningful explanation of how the illegal became legal overnight has ever been provided by Trump.
This reason behind this dramatic shift on the legality of the settlements became clear when Trump launched his ‘peace plan’ for the region in January of this year. Entitled ‘Peace To Prosperity’, the plan was cooked up by Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, a non-diplomat with strong family, cultural and business links to Israel.
Benjamin and Sarah Netanyahu pose with Ivanka Trump Jared Kushner at the new US Embassy in Jerusalem.
One of the main pillars of the plan allows Israel to annex the West Bank settlements. In other words, it allows Palestinian land in the West Bank to be deemed legally part of the permanent Israeli national territory.
‘Peace To Prosperity’ has thus given Israel the green light to begin the formal phased annexation of up to 42% of the land in the West Bank along with East Jerusalem (which was de facto annexed in 1980) - a green light which Netanyahu is very anxious to take advantage of before the upcoming US presidential election.
The rest of the ‘Peace To Prosperity’ is nothing more than an elaborate smokescreen to cover the Israeli land-grab of Palestinian territory.
In addition to providing unprecedented levels of political support to Netanyahu, Trump has provided Israel with staggering military aid. Over the lifetime of Trump’s four year term in office that aid is expected to come to €12,800,000,000 (€12.8bn).
This aid is conditional on Israel spending about 75% of it on buying military equipment from the US military-industrial complex. In doing so, Israel is allowed access to some of the most advanced military technology in the world, in a way the very few countries can.
A US president providing vast military aid to Israel is nothing new. In this regard, Trump is just replicating what every US president has done since the 1950s. Such aid has always been justified on the highly questionable basis that Israel needed it to defend itself from its hostile Arab neighbours.
What is new and different about Trump is his willingness to provide political and military cover to Israel’s unilateral decision to annex large portions of the West Bank and East Jerusalem - something which falls far beyond any reasonable definition of ‘defence’ and well within the definition of illegality.
With Trump’s blessing, Israel is attempting to seize the land of another nation, to create additional 'living space’ for an expansionary Zionist project - a project which will not only seize Palestinian land, but also deem Palestinians who live on it to be lesser persons under Israeli law.
The parallels between the modern Israeli state and Nazi Germany or apartheid South Africa write themselves.
The stakes for the Palestinian people could not be higher. The phased annexation of up to 42% of the West Bank is part of a much wider strategy to shred any possibility of a new Palestinian state having full sovereignty of a continuous West Bank territory.
This map shows how the strategy of settlements and annexation of those settlements will reduce Palestinian controlled lands (shown in brown) to a network of isolated reservations within a greater Israel.
The long-term objective of Israel’s dominant political tendency and military is clear. They wish to see the entire West Bank, an area of some 5,600 sq km annexed by the Israel. The Palestinian people would thus be left with only the Gaza Strip to call a homeland, an area of just 365 sq km.
In the interim period, the Palestinians would be left with temporary, partial control of a patchwork of isolated reservations within a greater Israeli territory. Over time, Israel would seek to annex these reservations using the proven tactic of establishing ‘outposts’ which evolve into settlements which evolve into national territory.
For the Israeli hawks, Trump is the enabler that they have been waiting for - the US president that will provide them with the political, economic and military support they need to create the greater Israel of their dreams.
When Trump won the US presidential election in November 2016, they accelerated the plantation of the West Bank and their plans for annexation. And now, with potentially just five months of the Trump presidency left, the phased annexation of Palestinian territory is set to begin on July 1st.
Éirígí For A New Republic has supported the Palestinian right to self-determination since our foundation in 2006. We view the proposed annexation of July 1st as another unacceptable act of aggression by the Israeli state against the Palestinian people.
We again offer our solidarity and support to the Palestinian people. And we call on people across Ireland and among the Irish diaspora to mobilise political opposition to the annexation of Palestinian land and to support the Boycott, Divest and Sanctions campaign against Israel.
Despite the Covid-19 lockdown, Éirígí activists marked Nakba Day on May 15th outside the Israeli Embassy in Dublin.