This week several important developments took place in Israel and the West Bank, with the crutches holding up the limping peace process falling from the hands of the two people supposedly leaning on them. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas lost control of their management of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Netanyahu and his government spokespeople could no longer recycle the claim that the obstacle to peace is Abbas’ refusal to recognize Israel as the state of the Jewish people. On the other hand, at the beginning of the 25th year of the Oslo Accord, Abbas can no longer claim to the Palestinian public that his investment in the diplomatic option is yielding dividends. An Israeli source who requested anonymity told Al-Monitor this week that if the right-wing government remains in power, Abbas will very soon ask the United Nations to recognize Palestine as a state under foreign occupation.
On Dec. 31, the Likud Central Committee, the most powerful body of the ruling party, passed unanimously a resolution urging the faction’s leaders to annex parts of the West Bank. By adopting such a resolution, the committee actually demanded to erase the dozens of UN resolutions against the occupation, to rip apart former US President George W. Bush's “road map for Middle East peace" and to tuck away Netanyahu’s 2009 Bar-Ilan speech that recognized the two-state solution. A large majority of Likud ministers and members of the Knesset raised their hands to support the decision that commits elected representatives of the party to work to apply Israeli law in the West Bank and freely allow construction in the “liberated centers of settlement in Judea and Samaria.” Thus, they ripped off the masks from the faces of Netanyahu and Abbas.
