Israeli Likud party ministers urge Netanyahu to annex the West Bank

3/7/2025 6:16

Cabinet ministers in Prime Minister

Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party called on Wednesday for Israel

to annex the Israeli-occupied West Bank before the Knesset

recesses at the end of the month.



They issued a petition ahead of Netanyahu's meeting next

week with U.S. President Donald Trump, where discussions are

expected to centre on a potential 60-day Gaza ceasefire and

hostage release deal with Hamas.



The petition was signed by 15 cabinet ministers and Amir

Ohana, speaker of the Knesset, Israel's parliament.



There was no immediate response from the prime minister's

office. Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer, long a confidant

of Netanyahu, did not sign the petition. He has been in

Washington since Monday for talks on Iran and Gaza.



"We ministers and members of Knesset call for applying

Israeli sovereignty and law immediately on Judea and Samaria,"

they wrote, using the biblical names for the West Bank captured

by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war.



Their petition cited Israel's recent achievements against

both Iran and Iran's allies and the opportunity afforded by the

strategic partnership with the U.S. and support of Trump.



It said the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on Israel

demonstrated that the concept of Jewish settlement blocs

alongside the establishment of a Palestinian state poses an

existential threat to Israel.



“The task must be completed, the existential threat removed

from within, and another massacre in the heart of the country

must be prevented,” the petition stated.



Most countries regard Jewish settlements in the West Bank,

many of which cut off Palestinian communities from one another,

as a violation of international law.



With each advance of Israeli settlements and roads, the West

Bank becomes more fractured, further undermining prospects for a

contiguous land on which Palestinians could build a sovereign

state long envisaged in Middle East peacemaking.



Israel's pro-settler politicians have been emboldened by the

return to the White House of Trump, who has proposed

Palestinians leave Gaza, a suggestion widely condemned across

the Middle East and beyond.