To Annex or Not Annex: Is That the Question?

Actually, that’s a question that most Israelis and most concerned Jews elsewhere have a ready answer to – and that answer is a resounding “No!!”. So why is it still a question?  The short answer to that, like so many answers to questions about Israeli politics nowadays is…. Bezalel Smotrich, Israeli Minister of Finance and annexationist extraordinaire.  There’s more, through.

Seemingly this perennial issue has arisen once again as a means to punch back against the U.K., France, Canada, Australia and several other “Western” countries that have decided to join the 147 states that already recognize the “State of Palestine.” Of course there is Palestine that the basic attributes of a state such as sovereignty and  defined borders, but most of the new “recognizers” are presumably doing it to punish Israel for the brutal continuation of the Gaza War and its persistence on flouting the will of the international community. As we all know, however, the only will Bibi Netanyahu obeys is that of the US as expressed by President Trump, whom he’s gotten pretty good at manipulating lately.

There is also a new Franco-Saudi initiative to further the cause of Palestinian statehood, which will be discussed on Sept 22 at the UN General Assembly opening (which also happens to be erev Rosh Hashanah). That initiative has produced a  “New York  Declaration” touting the importance of a Palestinian state and containing a full-throated Arab League condemnation of the atrocities of October 7, 2023.  Have you heard much about that? I thought not.  BTW the US and Israel boycotted the meetings at which it was hashed out.

The recognizing countries know that Israel will be officially furious but impotent to do anything, and this merely piles more words onto a 68 year-old issue. That’s lucky for Israel, as these nations constitute most of the friends Israel has left. But one person is in a position  to give a “Zionist answer” to  the offensive recognition.  Bezalel Smotrich has proposed that Israel will annex 82% of the West Bank, weeks after announcing a housing development near Jerusalem that will cleave the northern West Bank from its southern part and, in Smotrich’s words, “bury the idea of a Palestinian state.”

Smotrich may get to build – or at least start – his settlement development but I’ll go out on a limb and predict that the West Bank, or even part  of it, is unlikely to be annexed any time soon, if ever. There are good reasons – many of them – that Israel has kept both the West Bank and Gaza in legal limbo since 1967, even though the former is unquestionably part of the biblical Land of Israel and Gaza arguably so.

One Bibi Netanyahu has, in fact, spent his entire political career between the Scylla of annexation and the Charybdis of a Palestinian state.  Absolute aversion to a Palestinian state he imbibed from his father, a fierce and lifelong Revisionist who believed passionately in the eternal Land of Israel belonging to the People of Israel.  As for Bibi himself, a secular man of the world who has served for decades as Israel’s chief American whisperer and who also dreamt of being the man who made peace between Israel and the most important Arab states, he well understands that officially “burying the dream of a Palestinian state” might well be the straw the broke the camel’s back. The last four American presidents, Republican and Democrat alike, have been strongly in favor of the two-state solution, back to Bill Clinto, when Bibi served his first prime ministerial stint from 1996 to 1999.

The fifth (or fourth and sixth) has wobbled and talked about creating the “deal of the century” without much interest of what would be in it. Bibi openly hoped to square the circle and avoid both Scylla and Charybdis by making peace with important Arab states and simultaneously NOT allowing the creation of a Palestinian state.  Established and leftist pundits alike, including yours truly, jeered at him.  Nevertheless, he pulled it off in 2020 with the Abraham Accords.

A brief historical digression: In 2002, after the failure of the Oslo peace process and amid the flames of the Second Intifada, the Arab states, gathered in the Arab League. which had never played a constructive role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, finally did a Very Good Thing.  All 21 Arab states (22 counting Palestine) unanimously issued the Arab Peace Initiative (API), which offered Israel peace with the entire Arab world in return for a Palestinian state on all the land Israel had conquered in 1967.  It has been modified several times in Israel’s favor and is still on the table.  In other words, the League officially reversed the rejectionist position it had clung to since before 1948.  Saudi Arabia, which had recently supplanted Egypt as the lynchpin of the Arab world, originated and sponsored the API.

Unfortunately, the League’s timing was off.  Not only did they release the API on thhe eve of Passover in 2002, but a major suicide bomb went off that evening at a seder, killing over 30 Israelis and kicking off Operation Defensive Shield, the biggest Israeli offensive of the Second Intifada.  Israel ignored the API – and continues to ignore it to this day – though various politicians have sniped at its provisions, often distorting them, whenever they felt like it.

The real reason, of course, that Israel ignored the API is that Israelis had gotten used to the West Bank as their back yard, and also that several hundred thousand settlers had moved there.  Now the figure is well over 500,000 settlers, plus 200,000 in East Jerusalem.  Even many Israelis who opposed settlements feared the national trauma that would accompany a significant, much less complete withdrawal.  So the  API has stagnated.

Gaza was different.  Prime Minister Ariel Sharon withdrew all Israeli settlements and soldiers from it in 2005 and Hamas, which won the 2006 Palestinian elections, took it over in 2007. Bibi, Prime Minister again from 2009 on, was happy to play Hamas in Gaza off against the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and then complain the Palestinians were too divided for a state. He played them masterfully – until October 2023.

Back to 2020:  Bibi had been prime minister for 11 continuous years and that summer, annexation was rumored.  But by then, Arab countries were very worried about Iran and its proxies. Israel, for all their history of enmity with it, was unimpeachably anti-Iran and strongly backed by the Trump White House, which was looking for a Mideast win.  The United Arab Emirates, both an ally and a rival of Saudi Arabia, had been dealing with Israel semi-secretly for many years, and its small but very wealthy population seemed to care little about the Palestinians. Many of us were expecting an announcement that 30% or so of the West Bank would be annexed.  Instead, Trump, Bibi and the ruler of the UAE proclaimed an exchange of ambassadors with Israel and full diplomatic recognition, celebrated at the White House as the herald of a general Mideast peace.  And indeed several Arab states soon followed suit, Morocco, Bahrain, and Sudan. Three received very hefty signing bonuses from the US, but Sudan soon slipped into a devastating civil war and dropped out

Bibi had confounded the world; pulling peace with major Arab states out of a hat with no Palestinian state in sight.  For three years, the Mideast was rife with rumors that Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), ruler of Saudi Arabia was about to sign up with Abraham. Bibi had briefly lost power in 2021 but came back in time to celebrate New Year’s Eve 2023 as prime minister.  Joe Biden’s entrance into the White House made no difference; he was also a fervent acolyte of the Accords.

Then, as pundits were predicting the day MBS would sign up, October 7 exploded.  Amid the 1200 murdered Israelis and 250 hostages and a rapidly rising Gaza death toll, MBS made it absolutely clear that Saudi Arabia would never sign a treaty with Israel without “irreversible steps” toward a Palestinian state. Normalization with the Arab world is thus on hold.

Peace with the Arab world, however, is no longer Bibi’s prime objective.  Rather, absolute surrender by Hamas is his goal, despite the opposition by summer of 2025 from the IDF’s Chief of Staff and 2/3 or more of Israeli public opinion, insisting the goal is illusory and Israel should end the war and focus on the 50 remaining hostages (20 of whom are thought to be alive).  President Trump apparently asked him, ambiguously, to finish Hamas off soon because he doesn’t like wars. Estimates are that the new offensive may last six months to a year, finishing up just in time for new Israeli elections.

Meanwhile Bezalel Smotrich, who is a Minister in the Ministry of Defense as well Finance Minister, has been overseeing the de facto integration of the West Bank into Israel.  Thus, there’s little need any more for a legalistic de jure annexation, much as Smotrich would love to see it.  And Gaza?  That seems to depend on Trump’s variable whims. But Smotrich wants to punish the recognizer states and Bibi, desperate to keep Smotrich from breaking up the government by resigning, has to humor him.  Thus, “serious” discussion of annexation once again.

The UAE and the other Arab states, however, are not as confident as I am that this is a charade.  It has very publicly made clear that annexation is a “red line” that would undermine the Abraham Accords.  Reportedly, this is the first criticism by the UAE of Israel since Oct. 7.  However, if my analysis is correct, Bibi will soon quash talk of annexation, not least because President Trump would be mightily upset were his signature agreement to be endangered.  Smotrich will have to content himself with his planned housing development, assuming that it’s not caught in the crossfire.

So no, I don’t think Israel will declare the annexation of the West Bank or Gaza anytime soon. The number of states recognizing Palestine will rise to around 160 (more than recognize Israel), Smotrich and Bibi will keep the Gaza war and settler violence in the West Bank at a fast boil, and Bibi will keep avoiding Scylla and Charybdis – unless a legal buzz saw gets him first.