JERUSALEM, 28 Dec: Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s incoming hard-line government put West Bank settlement expansion at the top of its list of priorities on Wednesday, vowing to legalize dozens of illegally built outposts and annex the occupied territory as part of its coalition deal with its ultranational allies.
\nThe coalition agreements, released a day before the government is to be sworn into office, also included language endorsing discrimination against LGBTQ people on religious grounds, as well as generous stipends for ultra-Orthodox men who prefer to study instead of work.
\nThe package laid the groundwork for what is expected to be a stormy beginning for Netanyahu\u2019s government and could put it at odds with large parts of the Israeli public and Israel\u2019s closest allies abroad.
\nIts lengthy list of guidelines was led by a commitment to \u201cadvance and develop settlement in all parts of the land of Israel,\u201d including \u201cJudea and Samaria,\u201d the biblical names for the West Bank.
\nIsrael captured the West Bank in 1967 along with the Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem. The Palestinians seek the West Bank as the heartland of a future independent state. In the decades since, Israel has constructed dozens of Jewish settlements there that are now home to around 500,000 Israelis living alongside around 2.5 million Palestinians.
\nMost of the international community considers Israel\u2019s West Bank settlements illegal and an obstacle to peace with the Palestinians. The United States already has warned the incoming government against taking steps that could undermine the dwindling hopes for the establishment of an independent Palestinian state.
\nNetanyahu\u2019s new government \u2014 the most religious and hard-line in Israel\u2019s history \u2014 is made up of ultra-Orthodox parties, a far-right ultranationalist religious faction affiliated with the West Bank settler movement and his Likud party. It is to be sworn in on Thursday.
\nSeveral of Netanyahu\u2019s key allies, including most of the Religious Zionism party, are ultranationalist West Bank settlers.
\nIn the coalition agreement between Likud and Religious Zionism, Netanyahu pledges to legalize wildcat settlement outposts considered illegal even by the Israeli government. He also promises to annex the West Bank \u201cwhile choosing the timing and considering the national and international interests of the state of Israel.\u201d
\nSuch a move would alienate much of the world, and give new fuel to critics who compare Israeli policies in the West Bank to apartheid South Africa.
\nThe deal also grants favors to Itamar Ben-Gvir, a far-right politician who will be in charge of the national police force as the newly created national security minister.
\nIt includes a commitment to expand and vastly increase government funding for the Israeli settlements in the divided West Bank city of Hebron, where Ben-Gvir lives among a tiny settler community amid tens of thousands of Palestinians.
\nThat agreement also includes a clause pledging to change the country\u2019s anti-discrimination laws to allow businesses to refuse service to people \u201cbecause of a religious belief.\u201d The legislation drew outrage earlier this week and concerns about impingement of LGBTQ rights. Netanyahu has said he will not let the law pass, but nonetheless left the clause in the coalition agreement. AP<\/p>\n
Among its other changes is placing Bezalel Smotrich, a settler leader who heads Religious Zionism party, in a newly created ministerial post overseeing West Bank settlement policy.
\nIn an op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal, Smotrich said there would be no \u201cchanging the political or legal status\u201d of the West Bank, indicating that annexation would not immediately take place.
\nBut he leveled criticism at the \u201cfeckless military government\u201d that controls key aspects of life for Israeli settlements \u2014 such as construction, expansion and infrastructure projects. Smotrich, who will also be finance minister, is expected to push hard to expand construction and funding for settlements while stifling Palestinian development in the territory.
\nNetanyahu is returning to power after he was ousted from office last year after serving as prime minister from 2009 to 2021. He will take office while on trial for allegedly accepting bribes, breach of trust and fraud, charges he denies.
\nNetanyahu\u2019s partners are seeking widespread policy reforms that could alienate large swaths of the Israeli public, raise tensions with the Palestinians, and put the country on a collision course with the U.S. and American Jewry.
\nThe Biden administration has said it strongly opposes settlement expansion and has rebuked the Israeli government for it in the past.
\nEarlier on Wednesday, Israel\u2019s figurehead president expressed \u201cdeep concern\u201d about the incoming government and its positions on LGBTQ rights, racism and the country\u2019s Arab minority in a rare meeting called with Ben-Gvir, one of the coalition\u2019s most radical members.
\nPresident Isaac Herzog met with Ben-Gvir after members of his party this week called for the legalization of discrimination against LGBTQ people based on religious belief.
\nHerzog\u2019s office said the president urged Ben-Gvir to \u201ccalm the stormy winds and to be attentive to and internalize the criticism\u201d about the incoming government\u2019s stance on LGBTQ issues, Palestinian citizens of Israel, and a bill to remove a ban on politicians supporting racism and terrorism from serving in the Knesset, Israel\u2019s parliament.
\nThe government platform also mentioned that the loosely defined rules governing holy sites, including Jerusalem\u2019s flashpoint shrine known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, would remain the same.
\nBen-Gvir and other Religious Zionism politicians had called for the \u201cstatus quo\u201d to be changed to allow Jewish prayer at the site, a move that risked inflaming tensions with the Palestinians. The status of the site is the emotional epicenter of the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict. AP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
JERUSALEM, 28 Dec: Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s incoming hard-line government put West Bank settlement expansion at the top of its list of priorities on Wednesday, vowing to legalize dozens of illegally built outposts and annex the occupied territory as part of its coalition deal with its ultranational allies. The coalition agreements, released a day before the government […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-207890","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207890","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=207890"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207890\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=207890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=207890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=207890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}