Netanyahu wants to coordinate the measure with White House first, but bill will still be debated by coalition leaders in their own meeting slated for Sunday
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday pulled legislation aimed at annexing Israeli settlements in the West Bank that was slated to come before a key Knesset committee for a vote next week.
A spokesman for a senior member on the Knesset’s Ministerial Committee for Legislation told The Times of Israel that the prime minister wants to coordinate the measure with the White House first, but that the bill would still be debated by coalition leaders in their own meeting scheduled to take place on Sunday.
“In the 70th year of the rebirth of the State of Israel and after the 50th anniversary of the return of the Jewish people to its historic homeland in Judea and Samaria (West Bank)…we move to designate the status of these territories as an inseparable part of the sovereign State of Israel,” the legislation reads.
The measure comes just over a month after the top Likud Central Committee, the party’s top decision-making body, unanimously adopted a similar resolution which called on its members to act toward achieving West Bank annexation.
Netanyahu’s decision to delay the legislation is likely to cause a rift with various government ministers as well as settler leaders who have been aggressively campaigning for such a proposal.
Eighteen West Bank council chairman signed a letter Thursday organized by the Yesha settlement umbrella council calling on the prime minister to advance Kisch and Smotrich’s legislation.
“We recognize your historic opportunity to lead this important step, and ask that you allow the bill to be discussed and approved at the upcoming Ministerial Committee for Legislation meeting,” the letter stated. Just hours after it was published, Netanyahu was said to have ordered the freezing of the proposal.
Nevertheless, settler leaders are confident that such a proposal has never had a higher likelihood for being adopted. “Now more than ever, the conditions are ripe to apply sovereignty over Judea, Samaria, and the Jordan Valley,” Yesha Director-General Shiloh Adler told The Times of Israel.
Adler explained that “the timing of a decent American administration, the hypocrisy of Abu Mazen (Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas), who is once again embarking on a process of unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state, and the right-wing government provides a wonderful opportunity for this move.”
But Netanyahu’s decision to halt the advancement of such a measure is nothing new. Among previous legislation that the prime minister has prevented from coming to a vote has included a proposal to annex the Jordan Valley, as well as one to annex the city-settlement of Ma’ale Adumim. This in addition to a bill to absorb major settlements into Jerusalem’s municipal boundaries, which was frozen in October.
In fact, by way of contrast between the Zionist ideal and the reality, it ironically reminds me of this passage at the beginning of Chapter 2 of Hollywood Producer Joe Pasternak’s autobiography, “Easy the Hard Way”. This scene takes place in the early twentieth century. How quickly we forget.
“In our town, the postman was easily the most popular man. Children chased after him as he made his rounds. People smiled at him as he passed, as if they hoped he would reward them with a letter. I alone grew to dread his comings and goings. He reached our house about 9 o’clock in the morning. I always tried to arrange it so I was not there when he came. ‘
‘I had nothing against the man. It was my Uncle Geza who was the real cause of it all. Uncle Geza had gone to America a few years ago. In 1907, to be exact. He had hardly settled down in the new world before his letters began to be filled with what we knew to be the most obvious tall tales, not to say, downright lies. Uncle Geza was that kind, anyway. In our family, he was considered something of a sporting character. He lived in Budapest whereas we lived in a little town in Transylvania. My mother — Uncle Geza’s sister — was a strict woman; we children overheard fascinating rumors about Uncle Geza and the many girls who had fallen in love with him, of how he gambled and spent his evenings listening to gypsy music in dimly lit cafes. This was before he went to America, of course. ‘
‘Naturally, none of us believed the fantastic stories he sent back. He wrote that it was nothing for every family to have a bathtub of its own. He wrote that the police didn’t bother anyone unless he caused trouble. Uncle Geza said if somebody didn’t like his job, He could just leave it. In the six years he’s been in America, he’s changed his job three times. Once he’d told the owner of the factory he wished a plague would overtake him, and there was nothing the owner could do about it. He said he had moved from New York to Philadelphia without asking anyone’s permission and that he did not even have to report to the police. It was obvious he regarded us all as ignorant country cousins prepared to believe anything.”
https://archive.org/details/easyhardway00joep
The Left is always prating on about the need for the Jewish state to be not only Jewish but democratic while demanding that half a million Jews remain under military occupation and forbidden to live where they want forever, and what’s more, they are so stuffy and self-righteous about their rank hypocrisy! It makes me want to puke. And all over them, to boot.