Netanyahu says that he plans to annex 42% of the West Bank
Occupied Jerusalem (QNN)- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Saturday he would annex settlements in the occupied West Bank, which are built on 42 percent of the Palestinian West Bank lands, if he wins another term in office in a vote on Tuesday.
In an interview to Israeli Channel 12 News, Netanyahu was asked why he hadn’t extended Israeli sovereignty to large West Bank settlements, as it has done in occupied East Jerusalem and the occupied Golan Heights, which have been seized in 1967.
“Who says that we won’t do it? We are on the way and we are discussing it,” Netanyahu said. “You are asking whether we are moving on to the next stage – the answer is yes, we will move to the next stage. I am going to extend (Israeli) sovereignty and I don’t distinguish between settlement blocs and the isolated settlements.”
Netanyahu has told U.S. President Donald Trump earlier on Friday that he is unwilling to see even a single illegal Jewish settler being evacuated from the West Bank.
“All the settlements – blocs and not blocs – must remain under Israeli sovereignty,” Netanyahu told Channel 13 News.
Asked whether he expects Trump to recognize the West Bank as being under Israeli sovereignty, as he did with the Golan Heights, Netanyahu said: “Wait until the next term.”
The United Nations consider settlements that Israel has built in territory captured in the 1967 war to be illegal.
The United States broke with decades of international consensus last month by recognising Israeli sovereignty over the occupied Golan Heights, territory Israel captured from Syria.
