Netanyahu government makes West Bank settlement expansion its priority - The Guardian

Benjamin Netanyahu’s incoming hardline authorities enactment West Bank colony enlargement astatine the apical of its database of priorities connected Wednesday, vowing to legalise dozens of illegally built outposts and annex the occupied territory arsenic portion of its conjugation woody with its ultranational allies.

The conjugation agreements, released a time earlier the authorities is to beryllium sworn into office, besides included connection endorsing favoritism against LGBTQ+ radical connected spiritual grounds, arsenic good arsenic generous stipends for ultra-Orthodox men who similar to survey alternatively of work.

The bundle laid the groundwork for what is expected to beryllium a stormy opening for Netanyahu’s authorities and could enactment it astatine likelihood with ample parts of the Israeli nationalist and Israel’s closest allies abroad.

Its lengthy database of guidelines was led by a committedness to “advance and make colony successful each parts of the onshore of Israel”, including “Judea and Samaria”, the biblical names for the West Bank.

Israel captured the West Bank successful 1967 on with the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem. The Palestinians question the West Bank arsenic the heartland of a aboriginal autarkic state. In the decades since, Israel has constructed dozens of Jewish settlements determination that are present location to astir 500,000 Israelis surviving alongside astir 2.5 cardinal Palestinians.

Most of the planetary assemblage considers Israel’s West Bank settlements amerciable and an obstacle to bid with the Palestinians. The US has warned the incoming authorities against taking steps that could undermine the dwindling hopes for the constitution of an autarkic Palestinian state.

Netanyahu’s caller authorities – the astir spiritual and hardline successful Israel’s past – is made up of ultra-Orthodox parties, a far-right ultranationalist spiritual faction affiliated with the West Bank settler movement, and his Likud party. It is to beryllium sworn successful connected Thursday.

Several of Netanyahu’s cardinal allies, including astir of the Religious Zionism party, are ultranationalist West Bank settlers.

In the conjugation statement betwixt Likud and Religious Zionism, Netanyahu pledges to legalise wildcat colony outposts considered amerciable adjacent by the Israeli government. He besides promises to annex the West Bank “while choosing the timing and considering the nationalist and planetary interests of the authorities of Israel”.

Such a determination would alienate overmuch of the world, and springiness caller substance to critics who comparison Israeli policies successful the West Bank to apartheid South Africa.

The woody besides grants favours to Itamar Ben-Gvir, a far-right politician who volition beryllium successful complaint of the nationalist constabulary unit arsenic the recently created nationalist information minister.

It includes a committedness to grow and vastly summation authorities backing for the Israeli settlements successful the divided West Bank metropolis of Hebron, wherever Ben-Gvir lives among a tiny settler assemblage amid tens of thousands of Palestinians.

That statement besides includes a clause pledging to alteration the country’s anti-discrimination laws to let businesses to garbage work to radical “because of a spiritual belief”. The authorities drew outrage earlier this week and concerns astir impingement of LGBTQ+ rights. Netanyahu has said helium volition not fto the instrumentality pass, but nevertheless near the clause successful the conjugation agreement.

Among its different changes is placing Bezalel Smotrich, a settler person who heads the Religious Zionism party, successful a recently created ministerial station overseeing West Bank colony policy.

Netanyahu is returning to powerfulness aft he was ousted from bureau past year aft serving arsenic premier curate from 2009 to 2021. He volition instrumentality bureau portion connected proceedings for allegedly accepting bribes, breach of spot and fraud, charges helium denies.

His partners are seeking wide argumentation reforms that could alienate ample swaths of the Israeli public, rise tensions with the Palestinians, and enactment the state connected a collision people with the US and American Jewry.

The Biden medication has said it powerfully opposes colony enlargement and has rebuked the Israeli authorities for it successful the past.

Earlier connected Wednesday, Israel’s figurehead president expressed “deep concern” astir the incoming authorities and its positions connected LGBTQ+ rights, racism and the country’s Arab number successful a uncommon gathering called with Ben-Gvir, 1 of the coalition’s astir extremist members.

The authorities level besides mentioned that the loosely defined rules governing beatified sites, including Jerusalem’s flashpoint shrine known to Jews arsenic the Temple Mount and to Muslims arsenic the al-Aqsa mosque compound, would stay the same.

Ben-Gvir and different Religious Zionism politicians had called for the “status quo” to beryllium changed to let Jewish supplication astatine the site, a determination that risked inflaming tensions with the Palestinians. The presumption of the tract is the affectional centre of the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict.