What looked on Jan. 28 to be Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s greatest achievement — a joyous ceremony at the White House during which President Donald Trump gave the Israeli right the best diplomatic gift of all time — has since turned into an electoral burden. This about-face is due to Netanyahu’s inability to realize the promise he made to impose sovereignty on the West Bank before elections scheduled for March 2. 

As Trump said at the ceremony, his plan gives Israel 30% of the territory on the West Bank and allows it to annex all of the settlements after the formation of a “joint committee” to finalize the details. Netanyahu ignored this little condition, and with the encouragement of the American ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, told Israeli journalists after the ceremony that sovereignty would be enacted immediately, that he would gather the government to authorize it upon his return to Israel. It turned out that this had not been coordinated with White House seniors Jared Kushner and Jason Greenblatt, the architects of the plan, who rejected sovereignty before the elections and before the joint committee completed its work.

Netanyahu was thus forced to retreat, and after several days of silence on the subject admitted on Feb. 4 that the highly significant move would be postponed until after the elections, if he is elected. At a campaign event in Beit Shemesh, he said, “When we win, we will impose Israeli law on all the Jewish settlements in the Jordan Valley and Judea and Samaria [West Bank].” 

Netanyahu’s retreat on such a big promise so damages his credibility on the right that it could have electoral repercussions. In the September elections, the Likud received around a quarter of the settler vote, or about a mandate and a half, and even more than that from religious Zionists in general and the ideological right that supports the concept of the Land of Israel.