The great hokum of Israeli annexation - by Alex Traiman

The Jewish state is not about to march across any border or claim even an inch of new territory. To the contrary, its footprint in Judea and Samaria will remain exactly the same.

Alex Traiman..
JNS.org..
23 June '20..

For the last several weeks, habitual critics of Israeli policies, dubious self-described Israel supporters and even some longtime friends have come out against Israeli plans to “annex” parts of the West Bank.

Here are their arguments: The Palestinian Authority will collapse; Israel will effectively kill the two-state solution and eventually become a minority within its own binational state; the peace treaty with Jordan will be rescinded; normalization with Arab Gulf states will halt; European nations will apply sanctions on Israel; Democrats will distance themselves even further; and the Trump administration will be angered.

Sounds pretty bad. As David Horovitz of The Times of Israel summarized, such a move “not only damages the way we are perceived around the world, it remakes the way we present and see ourselves.”

The statement is reminiscent of the infamous argument of inferiority made by 10 of the 12 Jewish spies who gave a negative report to Moses and the Jewish people, just as the young nation was getting set to enter the Promised Land for the first time: “ … We were like grasshoppers in our eyes, and so we were in their eyes.” That report, which commentators consider a fundamental Jewish error, led to the Israelites having to wander the desert for 40 years. And the date of the spies’ report — the ninth day of Jewish calendar month of Av, Tisha B’Av—has been a day of Jewish mourning for centuries.

In rehashing the same unfounded biblical fears, what is clear is that modern critics are hyper-concerned with the optics of an Israeli administrative move, despite the simple fact that Israel’s action would not change any facts on the ground.

Changing status, applying Israeli law

Many of today’s critics specifically call Israel’s upcoming move an “annexation” because the politically charged term falsely implies that Israel will be marching across a line and taking over property it has no rights to and does not currently control. Yet what Israel is about to do is alter its own governing structure and formally apply Israeli law to the 400,000 Jewish citizens who already live in the strategic lands the Jewish state has controlled for decades.

(Continue to Full Column)

If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work.