Israel Lawmakers Plan Bill to Annex West Bank Settlement Members of governing coalition say they will put forward the measure after Donald Trump takes office By Rory Jones
http://www.wsj.com/articles/israel-lawmakers-plan-bill-to-annex-west-bank-settlement-1483395594
TEL AVIV—Members of Israel’s governing coalition said they would propose legislation after Donald Trump’s inauguration to annex a West Bank Jewish settlement for the first time, defying the United Nations and the international community.
If approved, such a law would mark a stark departure from decades of Israeli policy tolerating and even promoting settlements but not considering them part of the country proper.
Naftali Bennett, leader of the pro-settlement Jewish Home party, said Monday that after the new U.S. president takes office on Jan. 20, he would put to an initial vote in parliament a bill to make the settlement Ma’ale Adumim part of Israel. Mr. Trump has indicated he will ease U.S. pressure on Israel to curtail settlements when he is in the White House.
“The conclusion is to stop the march of folly toward a Palestinian state and to implement Israeli law in Ma’ale Adumim,” Mr. Bennett said in a statement issued from the settlement. Jewish settlers in the West Bank are subject to military law, but if the territory they occupy is annexed they come under civilian Israeli law.
Mr. Bennett has advocated for Israel to abandon its longstanding commitment to establishing a Palestinian state as part of a future peace deal—a position that in part spurred the U.S. decision last month to allow the U.N. to pass a rare censure of Israel that deemed settlements illegal.
His plan to push for annexation of a settlement appeared to be in response to that U.N. resolution and a subsequent speech by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry that also criticized Israel over settlements.
Jewish Home holds enough seats in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s fragile ruling coalition to force a collapse of the government if it wants to. In recent months, Mr. Netanyahu has acquiesced to many of the party’s demands to expand or maintain settlements on land Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war.
To become law, the bill would need the support of the vast majority of governing coalition members, who account for 67 out of 120 seats in the Knesset. It already has the support of some of the 30 lawmakers from Mr. Netanyahu’s Likud party and all of Jewish Home’s eight seats.
Members of the Likud party and Mr. Bennett’s Jewish Home initially drafted a bill last year to annex Ma’ale Adumim—one of the largest Jewish settlements in the West Bank with 37,000 residents, and located just 5 miles east of Jerusalem—but ultimately decided not to push it while the Obama administration was still in office.
Lawmakers from all but one of the parties in Mr. Netanyahu’s coalition signed off on support for the bill last year. Those from the ultraorthodox United Torah Judaism party, which has six seats, haven’t formally offered their support.
It would have to pass a number of votes in the parliament before becoming law, a process likely to take months.
“Right now, the prime minister asked us not to do anything active in the short term as he is going to consider the move with the President-elect Trump and will work to get support,” said Yoav Kish, a member of the Likud party who led the drafting of the bill. “From my side, I’m going to push it forward once we pass President Obama.” CONTINUE AT SITE
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