New York Times investigation reveals Israel’s secret plans to annex the West Bank
An investigation conducted by three journalists from the New York Times, Natan Odenheimer, Ronan Bergman and Patrick Kingsley, the latter correspondent of the newspaper in Jerusalem, published yesterday on the home page of the American newspaper, reveals the Israeli government’s attempt to consolidate under the table, and secretly modify, control of the occupied territories of the West Bank. And this despite International Law prohibiting it; and despite the fact that Israeli judges have long established that “Israeli control of the territory is a temporary military occupation”, and that it can only be exercised as such, in compliance with international law. International law that Israel has regularly violated since 1967, the year in which it took control of the West Bank. Since then, and in the last 9 months in an even more bloody and bloody manner, it has been reduced to being a colony brutally subjected to Israeli tyranny, managed like a concentration camp by the occupation army, and devoured in its territories year after year by that which, in no uncertain terms, I define as the epidemic of settlements which manifests itself with the growing spread of ultra-Orthodox messianic settlers, increasingly aggressive and bloodthirsty. An epidemic that has effectively devoured the Palestinian State, reducing it to nothing more than a series of small enclaves, without the possibility of free communication between one and the other, and where every route of communication and connection is subject to illogical and sadistic controls, checkpoints managed arbitrarily by the army and, since 7 October, also by the settlers, real armed terrorist gangs, with a license to kill.
An Israeli soldier at a guard post in the West Bank
The recording referred to in the article, lasting about half an hour, contains a speech that Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich gave on June 9th at a private event. At that juncture he confided to the settlers of the Israeli-occupied West Bank that “the government is engaged in a clandestine effort to irreversibly change the way in which the Territory is governed, and to consolidate Israel’s control over it without being accused of formally annex it.” The objective of the settler Smotrich, who also lives in an illegal settlement and in an illegally built house, in defiance of International Law, is clear: to prevent the West Bank from becoming part of a Palestinian state. At a certain point in the speech he declares, translated verbatim: “I tell you that (the transformation) is mega-dramatic. These changes modify the DNA of the entire system.” In the recording, provided by one of the participants, a researcher from Peace Now, an anti-occupation movement, Smotrich is heard saying that to deflect international control “we have created a separate civil system”; Translated, this means that the government transferred some supervisory powers to Smotrich under the table while ensuring that it continues to appear to be a temporary military occupation overseen by army generals, not a permanent civilian annexation administered by Israeli public officials.
The recording caused a certain sensation in the international press, although here in Italy it was not covered with the same due attention. Such a resonance as to force Smotrich’s spokesperson, Eytan Fold, to confirm the contents of the speech and to specify that “the event was not a secret”. The article states that, “although Smotrich’s opposition to ceding control over the West Bank is no secret, the Israeli government’s official position is that the status of the West Bank remains open to negotiation between Israeli and Palestinian leaders.” Smotrich’s words, and the parallel actions implemented in secret by Netanyahu’s government, however, contradict the Prime Minister’s official position and are undoubtedly destined to make the process of autonomy of the Palestinian State even more difficult. What transpires from his speech is “a carefully orchestrated program to take authority over the West Bank out of the hands of the Israeli army and hand it over to the civilians who work for Smotrich in the defense ministry. Parts of the plan have already been introduced incrementally over the last 18 months and some authorities have already been transferred to civilians.” Again according to Smotrich’s words, in this way “it will be easier to make it digestible in the international and legal context, so that they don’t say that we are doing the annexation here”.
Bezalel Smotrich has had the indecent and immoral plan of annexation and annihilation of the Palestinian Arabs and all non-Jewish minorities in his drawer for decades; a chilling plan of which I have ample knowledgeAnd written in a previous article of mine last May 13th. Together with Daniella Weiss he is the “leader” of the extremist messianic faction of ultra-Orthodox settlers who plan to “Jewish” the entire territory “from the river to the sea”. And why not, with an eye also turned to Syria, Jordan and Lebanon. The aim is to bring the number of Jews in the Occupied Territories from the current 800,000 to three million. Smotrich’s design is consistent with his entire biography. An ultra-right parliamentarian in Netanyahu’s government, together with Itamar Ben Gvir, leader of the far-right Israeli party Otzma Yehudit, Minister of National Security, himself an illegal settler, he has had only one obsession since he was a boy. A magnificent obsession that allowed him to conquer, at a very young age, a place in the current Government which, with Gvir, he holds in check. Netanyahu is “fully with us,” Smotrich underlined in his speech.
And if for many, on this side of the Mediterranean, it seems like solipsistic rambling, it is neither for those who deal with the topic, nor even for the Palestinians who for decades have been very clear about the current situation and, more recently , they are well aware of the extreme gale force winds that are gathering over their heads and which risk degenerating into what meteorologists call the perfect storm. “Palestinians have argued for years that Israeli leaders are seeking to annex the West Bank in all but name, building settlements in strategic locations in an effort to prevent contiguous Palestinian control over the entire territory. It’s a story that’s been going on since 1967,” said Ibrahim Dalalsha, director of the Horizon Center, a policy analysis group in Ramallah, West Bank. “Long before Smotrich came on the scene.”
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