ISRAELIS DIVIDED OVER NETANYAHU PLAN TO ANNEX WEST BANK AREAS

Benjamin Netanayhu's plan to take control of parts of the West Bank has divided Israelis into two camps. Supporters, who agree the plan amounts to “applying Israeli sovereignty,” and critics, who call it an “annexation,” regarded as illegal by the international community, Tamara Zieve reported for Deutsche Presse Agentur (dpa) on June 25, 2020.

The two terms form a battle line in a war of words between supporters and critics of the Israeli plan to apply its civilian law over parts of the territory. They reveal conflicting Israeli perspectives on how international law applies to such a move, which according to a coalition agreement may be taken by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as early as July 1.

Applying civilian law to territories in the West Bank is the method Israel will use to take control of the areas, explains Pnina Sharvit Baruch, former head of the Israeli army's International Law Department. Exactly which parts of the land will be affected by the move remains unclear. Israel refers to the land as Judea and Samaria, the Biblical names for southern and northern West Bank. It also refers to it as "disputed territory" rather than "occupied territory." Supporters of the plan argue it is not annexation, because they say the land currently belongs to no one and, they claim, Israel has a right to it. "Proponents of this policy believe Israel already has legal rights to this territory," says Professor Avi Bell, of Bar-Ilan University's Faculty of Law.

Meanwhile, most of the international community sees Palestinian claims to the land as stronger than Israel's. The settlements are widely seen as illegal and the move usually described as an annexation. In fact annexation, the act of a state adding foreign territory to its own is, in itself, illegal under international law. A 2016 United Nations Security Council Resolution describes Israel's settlement activity as a "flagrant violation" of international law. This is a key argument used by critics of the move. Earlier this month, 250 scholars of international law penned an open letter to the Israeli government condemning the plan. "The norm prohibiting unilateral annexation of territory acquired by force has come to be universally recognized as a basic rule of international law," they wrote. The West Bank was taken by force during the Six-Day War in 1967.