Editorial | No to Israel annexation plan

This newspaper, it bears repeating, insists on Israel’s right to exist and to live in peace within secure borders – so long as those borders are the ones that prevailed prior to the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, as recognised by international law and underlined by United Nations Security Council Resolution 242.

We also subscribe to the right of the Palestinians to self-determination and to a two-state solution in their conflict with Israel, which is the position formally held by Jamaica, and should be reasserted by the Holness administration. This is important, given Jamaica’s recent strong relationship with Benjamin Netanyahu’s government and recent developments that pose challenges for Middle East peace.

Mr Netanyahu proposes, starting next month, to annex, or as he puts it, apply Israeli sovereignty to several bits of the occupied West Bank and the Jordan Valley, where Israeli settlements exist. Most countries, including many of Israel’s closest allies, agree that this would be contrary to international law.

Should the Israeli prime minister proceed, it would, as a global group of human rights experts declared this week, formalise the West Bank into a “Palestinian Bantustan” and perfect a “vision of 21st-century apartheid”. Inevitably, it will lead to another round of Arab-Israeli violence, worsening the instability of the Middle East.

Mr Netanyahu is emboldened on this track by having, after three inconclusive elections, largely co-opted Benny Ganz’s Blue and White Party into a broad, even if a potentially shaky, coalition. But more important, he has the imprimatur of the United States (US) of Donald Trump.

Essentially, the proposal is an echo of America’s Middle East Peace Plan, authored by Mr Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and unveiled in January. It would cede all of the Jordan Valley to Israel, allow it to annex the lands around nearly 150 West Bank settlements and 450,000 people, and have the contested city of Jerusalem as its capital. Israel would acquire around 30 per cent of West Bank territory. The Palestinians would be left with a patchwork of enclaves, connected by narrow corridors of land and tunnels.

What, in fact, would be left, the independent UN experts said in their declaration, would be “a Palestinian Bantustan, islands of disconnected land, completely surrounded by Israel and with no territorial connection to the outside world”. Added the group: “The annexation of occupied territory is a serious violation of the Charter of the United Nations and the Geneva Conventions, and contrary to the rules affirmed by the United Nations Security Council.”

NEW EFFORT

But for the fact that its presence may have created a cause for talk, most major capitals have embraced neither the American plan nor Mr Netanyahu’s intention to implement it. Indeed, this week, European Union (EU) foreign ministers urged the US to join a new effort to push the peace process along. However, the EU foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, insisted that the initiative must “respect internationally agreed parameters”.

We agree. Indeed, the principles elaborated by the EU, and contained in the various declarations by the United Nations on the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, have long been a foundation of Jamaica’s foreign policy. That, sticking to the EU principles, has served us well. There is no cause to change.

In recent years, relations between the Jamaican and Israeli governments have warmed considerably, even if the basis of the engagement is not always transparent. The Israelis, however, are known to have provided Jamaica with cybersecurity support and have talked about other partnerships in technology.

Jamaica has also provided political support for Israel. Prime Minister Andrew Holness, who visited the Middle East country in 2017, has invited Mr Netanyahu to reciprocate with a visit to the island. In the circumstance, Mr Holness should make it known to Mr Netanyahu that Jamaica does not countenance his annexation plan – that the principle is wrong.