Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced on Tuesday his plans to annex the Jordan Valley in the West Bank as an election promise if he wins next time.
"Today, I announce my intention, after the establishment of a new government, to apply Israeli sovereignty to the Jordan Valley and the northern Dead Sea," Netanyahu said in a speech broadcast live on Israeli TV channels.
The prime minister said, however, that the move would be done after publication of a long-awaited US peace plan and consultations with US President Donald Trump.
Around 65,000 Palestinians and 11,000 Israeli settlers live in the Jordan Valley, according to the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem. The main Palestinian city is Jericho, with around 28 villages and smaller Bedouin communities.
For their part, the EU said they did not recognise any changes made to the pre-1967 borders and called any settlement plans "illegal under international law".
IF you have been in denial about living in a "soft, but hardening" dictatorship", I think the above article should be a very strident wake-up call, that you have been utterly dead wrong about this.
Unfortunately, neither Mike nor I can ever visit Israel; and as a Christian pacifist activist, I would love to go.
But sadly, as people who want to see both a flowering Israel and a flowering Palestine, and do support BDS, because economics is a language Israelis understand well, I understand fully, that this can never happen.
Given this reality, we would probably get so physically beaten up at Ben-Gurion Airport,courtesy of the IDF, and thrown, head first, on a flight back to the mainland, that we would most probably be wheelchair-bound for the rest of our lives, were we idiotic enough to try to go.
Hell, look at what happened to peace activists on the Flotilla of the Mari Marave, 2010: As mentioned in wikipedia.com: Gaza Flotilla Raid, 2010 The article goes on to state:
" The Gaza flotilla raid was a military operation by Israel against six civilian ships of the "Gaza Freedom Flotilla" on 31 May 2010 in international waters in the Mediterranean Sea. Nine activists were killed on one ship during the raid and ten Israeli soldiers were wounded, one seriously. One further Turkish activist died later of his wounds. Three of the six flotilla ships, organized by the Free Gaza Movement and the Turkish Foundation for Human Rights and Freedoms and Humanitarian Relief (İHH), were carrying humanitarian aid and construction materials, with the intention of breaking the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip. Israel had warned the flotilla to abort their mission, describing it as a provocation.[1]
So, peace activists, desperately trying to bring humanitarian aid into Gaza, and their travels to get there, are characterized by the Israeli government as a "provocation"?!?
Kindly remember this incident, when any Pro-Israeli Influencer you know, tries, desperately to remind you, that "Israel is the 'only democracy in the Middle East'.
And also, take a look at how Israel is briskly annexing lots of land in Gaza, the West Bank,and East Jerusalem, the result of which will be the prevention of a contiguous State of Palestine... from ever being realized.