Weekly Commentary: Follow up on the annexation solution

Dr.Aaron Lerner
IMRA
Weekly Commentary
17 March '11



The 10 March 2011 commentary on the annexation option generated considerable feedback.

Numerous alternatives were raised. Among them:

1. “Creeping annexation” according to which annexation take place over several decades: This approach ignores that the whole reason that there is a need to come up with an Israeli “solution” is that there is a very tangible danger that a sovereign Palestinian state that constitutes an existential danger to Israel will be foisted on us this fall. A twenty or thirty year program is simply irrelevant.

2. Residency in the West Bank with voting in Jordan: The program relies on Jordan’s cooperation and if implemented could contribute to destabilizing our neighbor.

3. West Bank in confederation with Jordan: Out of the frying pan and into the fire. No one can be sure who will be ruling Jordan in the future. lf a sovereign Palestinian state in the West Bank would be an existential danger to Israel then why would a sovereign Palestinian state in the West Bank and Jordan – a definite possible outcome of such a program - be any less an existential danger?

4. Encouraging Palestinian emigration: Even if such a project could be implemented it would not meet the relevant time frame of months.

Annexation certainly carries with it risks.

But the risks associated with a sovereign Palestinian state are so great and the threat that such a state will come into existence in a few months so real that the “calculated risk” of annexation is dwarfed by the sovereign Palestinian state alternative.

Again. Autonomy would be better. But if the real options on the menu are a sovereign Palestinian state or annexing and giving the Palestinians in the West Bank the right to be Israeli citizens, then the clear choice is annexation.

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