When the Israeli Cabinet convened on Feb. 9, it was obvious to just about everybody in attendance that there would be no annexation of West Bank lands, no matter how small, until after the March 2 elections. At a campaign rally in Maale Adumim the evening before, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that the United States and Israel were busy mapping out the area and that Israel will not be acting immediately to impose sovereignty on any part of it.
The morning of the Cabinet meeting, David Friedman, the US ambassador to Israel, provided additional clarity, tweeting, “Any unilateral action in advance of the completion of the committee process endangers the Plan & American recognition.” This statement came from the man who provided momentum to the long-standing aspiration of the right to impose Israeli sovereignty on at least part of the West Bank before the upcoming election. Now, he had deflated the right’s annexation balloon once and for all. That Friedman is popular among the settlers and acts as their lobbyist in the White House did not soften the blow. If anything, it put Netanyahu on the defensive.
With three weeks left until the elections, Netanyahu was forced to put out a fire in his own camp while racing to win 61 seats for the right-wing-ultra-Orthodox bloc. What makes the situation all the more frustrating for him is that Netanyahu himself had fanned the flames when he promised annexation. The settler leadership and his ministers from Yamina are not making life easy for him. They have called on him to show leadership by declaring the unilateral annexation of West Bank territories without US support. They even invoked former Prime Minister Menachem Begin, who announced the annexation of the Golan Heights in 1981 without first informing the Americans.
“There will never be a better time to impose sovereignty on our homeland,” tweeted Defense Minister Naftali Bennett Feb. 8. “I call on Prime Minister Netanyahu to bring the annexation of Judea and Samaria [West Bank] up for an immediate vote by the government. Mr. Prime Minister, we will stand by your side. Without [Israeli] sovereignty, we will get a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital.” Netanyahu was livid.
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