There is big news from Israel today. Benny Gantz, the man who for three elections tried to retire Netanyahu, has surrendered. Benjamin Netanyahu will be prime minister for the next 18 months, which will include a corruption trial; Gantz will then become prime minister, and the power-sharing deal is said to OK annexation of large portions of the occupied West Bank beginning in July.
Barak Ravid of Israel’s Channel 13 explains the deal on annexation. Israeli politics are just too right wing for Gantz to have held the line. This is Netanyahu’s “legacy” and he needs to do it while Trump is in power:
The coalition deal between Netanyahu & Gantz says Netanyahu can bring “the understandings with the Trump administration” on the annexation of parts of the West Bank to a discussion in the cabinet & to a vote either in the cabinet or in the Knesset starting from July 1st…Netanyahu’s wish to annex the Jordan Valley and other parts of the occupied West Bank was one of the main sticking points in the negotiations on the new government. Gantz gave up on his demand to have a veto power over any decision on annexation..
According to the deal Netanyahu and Gantz will work “in full agreement with the U.S.” regarding the Trump plan including on the issue of mapping the parts in the West Bank the U.S. is ready to recognize as part of Israel..
Netanyahu sees the annexation of parts of the West Bank as his main legacy. According to his aides he wants to implement it enough time before the presidential elections in the U.S. fearing Trump might lose and the move will not be possible if Joe Biden is in the White House…
The deal has prompted agonized cries from liberal Zionists but promises to resist from leading Palestinian politicians of Israel’s Joint List. Aida Touma-Sliman writes:
The next Israeli gov’ will be a dangerous right wing one. Gantz entered the field hoping to replace Netanyahu and ended up strengthening the latter’s racist and anti-democratic politics. We will lead the opposition to this annexation gov’ – during the Covid crisis and after it.
Palestinian politicians were the big winners of the last election; and are empowered by the news. Joint List head Ayman Odeh writes on twitter [Hebrew, automated translation]:
Gantz’s surrender is a slap in the face to the civilian who repeatedly goes to the ballot box to oust Netanyahu. Gantz was not brave enough to win and chose to legalize annexation, racism and corruption.
Joint List lawmaker, and doctor, Ahmad Tibi:
Blue and White [Gantz’s party] waved a white flag. It surrendered to all political dictates (annexation in July), and in the civil sphere it surrendered to the National Law, the Kaminitz Law [limiting Palestinian building permits]… We will see in the fight against the government of 52 ministers and deputy ministers a challenge and mission. I feel the loss of millions of citizens who want change.
Annexation is understood to mean about 30 percent of the West Bank, including the Jordan Valley and Jewish settlements that include more than 620,000 colonists.
Israel lobbyist Martin Indyk says Trump will lie down for annexation to satisfy the American Christian right:
Coronavirus or not… this much is clear: Trump will greenlight the annexation to secure his Evangelical base going into the election.
Indyk leaves out Trump’s Florida game: the Jewish voters who can be crucial in that swing state.
The conventional wisdom is that this deal will be a test for liberal Zionist organizations in the U.S. to oppose annexation now, and recruit Democratic politicians here against it. Note that last week such an initiative resulted in 11 congresspeople writing a letter opposing annexation. Not exactly a groundswell. But J Street lately endorsed Joe Biden and he welcomed the endorsement; he is sure to take a stance against annexation.
The liberal Zionist orgs will have to work with Palestinians politicians if they aim to block annexation.
Israel Policy Forum beseeches the new Israeli government not to act.
We are disappointed that Benny Gantz has agreed to this step as a condition for forming a unity government, not least because it is a departure from his previous statements and stances on the subject of West Bank annexation. We hope that the new Israeli government closely examines the potential consequences of unilateral annexation and the deleterious impact it will have on Israeli security and diplomacy and that it heeds the warnings against unilateral annexation that have come from Israeli security experts, the United States Congress, the European Union, foreign policy experts, and American Jewish leaders.
Israel supporter Tamara Cofman Wittes says hopefully that facts on the ground won’t mean a thing to a Biden administration…
Trump’s green light does not end the issue. Presidential recognition of territorial claims are a matter of executive discretion that can be immediately reversed by a new administration.
h/t Yossi Gurvitz
According to what Ian Lustick wrote, I should be glad that this annexation will occur, so as to clarify the change of direction that is necessary for a real solution (based upon UN Resolution 242 rather than based upon surrender by the Palestinians) to arrive and to clarify that the current tense is not consonant with 242. As such Gantz has done the Palestinians a favor and listening to the Joint List would be equivalent to perpetuating a lie.
The only real gamechanger on the table for the Palestinian people is and has been since Oslo an abandonment of the concept of a “separate” state either alongside Israel and certainly not a Bantustanised version. The only way forward which is going to bring real and tangible change is the dissolution of the PA and a claim for equal rights for all of the people between the River and the Sea. One of the greatest crimes if not the greatest crime visited on the Palestinians has been and continues to be the duplicity of Abbas and his cronies including Erekat and Ashrawi who have been flagging up forever and a day it seems the inevitability of a single state if Israel/the US continues with current policies. Israel has doubled down on those policies and the annexation plan is simply a further stage in its racist Apartheid evolution.
Nothing will really change within the PA until the Erekats and the Ashrawis of the PA actually risk giving up their perks and privileges and show the courage to actually call for a 1SS which is highly unlikely to say the least. Abbas is and always has been a useless preening self server who knows that allowing another election will see him disappear off the world stage. Time for the younger generation of Palestinians to take to the streets and call for an end to the charade.
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20200420-eu-warns-gantz-not-to-accept-annexation-of-west-bank-settlements/
“EU warns Gantz not to accept annexation of West Bank settlements” Middle East Monitor, April 20, 2020
“The European Union has warned Israel’s Benny Gantz not to accept the annexation of the country’s settlements in the occupied West Bank, Quds Press reported on Sunday.
“EU officials have apparently told Gantz’s foreign affairs adviser, Melody Sucharewicz, over the past few weeks that Europe strongly opposes any unilateral move to extend Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank.
“The officials also told Sucharewicz that any such move would have serious implications for Israel-EU relations.
“Gantz has made several comments regarding the annexation of the illegal settlements, and could possibly agree with the move, which could happen if he agrees to be part of a coalition government with Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu.
“The EU diplomats were told by Sucharewicz that Gantz has been forced to compromise his views on annexation. She claimed that the erstwhile leader of the Blue and White bloc would try to turn down such a plan if he does join a coalition government.”
Meanwhile:
https://www.tikkun.org/an-israeli-coalition-government-which-betrays-judaism?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=838a3230-912b-4a2a-96b6-2ed57029598a
Tikkun – “An Israeli Coalition Government Which Betrays Judaism” By Rabbi Michael Lerner, April 20, 2020
EXCERPT:
“Israeli newspapers are announcing the creation of a new Israeli government: Prime Minister Netanyahu and Kahol Lavan Chair Benny Gantz have agreed on a proposal that would allow Netanyahu to stay as prime minister for a year and a half and allow him to avoid the trial for his criminal acts.
“Although Gantz presented himself as the moderate alternative to Netanyahu, in the final analysis his decision to not include Israeli Palestinian political parties into his potential coalition government left him with little grounds to refuse the deal offered by Netanyahu which seems to include an annexation (date yet to be determined) of a significant section of the West Bank (where Palestinians have hoped to build an independent Palestinian state living in peace with Israel). Gantz’s betrayal of his own voters is now being justified as a response to the international pandemic, though it has zero relationship to that global tragedy. Like many who present themselves as moderates in politics, Gantz’s only real commitment was to his own political power, even at the expense of facilitating one of the most immoral steps yet in Israel’s overcoming of democracy and becoming an ethnic and religious state with little concern about its own minorities. “
Yup, it’s all agonized cries and hand-wringing while the dirty work is being done, but at the end of the day hold-their-noses “liberal Zionists” will be just as glad as their harder-core co-collectivists that Thousand Years! Jewish / “Jewish State” supremacism has been snatched from the jaws of justice, accountability and equality.
I think he’s going to don his “Grand Marshal of the Israeli Day Parade” outfit and support the best, truly, the greatest annexation ever.