Annexation Not a Hollow Gesture

Submitted by Liz (United States), May 29, 2020 at 11:25

First, Israel is not annexing territory. In 1967, Israel recaptured territory Jordan had illegally seized and occupied 19 years before. For the last 50+ years, Israel has sought to negotiate peace with Arabs still trying to justify their failed wars of annihilation against Israel, by offering most of the disputed territory as a bargaining chip. The Arabs, clinging to notions of Arab and Muslim privilege and superiority insist no one—not Jews, Christians or other ethnic or religious minorities—has a right to raise a state in the Middle East not dominated by Arab Muslims.

For this reason, extending Israeli sovereignty to the Israeli settlements is not a hollow gesture. It says out loud to the world the thing the world attempts to cover up, everyday: That the Palestinians are not interested in negotiating peace. They are exercising their plan of phases through which they squeeze concessions of land out of Israel until Israel finally gives up strategic territory and can no longer defend itself. That will be the moment Israel's enemies launch what they hope will be their final assault through a military victory. Israel is saying, we have a right to defensible borders, and if the Palestinians are unwilling, after 30 years of Oslo, to negotiate peace, then we will set borders in land that is rightfully ours anyway, without the input of the Palestinians.

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