US warning to Israel signals new backpedaling by Trump
The Trump administration has explicitly warned Israel against annexing parts of the occupied West Bank, saying it would trigger an "immediate crisis" between the two close allies, Israel's defense minister said Monday.
It was the latest indication that President Donald Trump is returning to more traditional U.S. policy and will not give Israel free rein to expand its control over the West Bank and sideline the Palestinians, as Israeli nationalists had hoped.
Speaking in parliament, Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman said U.S. officials had been clear in their opposition to Israeli annexation of West Bank land — a notion that has gained steam in far-right Israeli circles since Trump's election.
"We received a direct message — not an indirect message and not a hint — from the United States. Imposing Israeli sovereignty on Judea and Samaria would mean an immediate crisis with the new administration," Lieberman said, shortly before departing for a working visit to the U.S.
Judea and Samaria is the biblical term for the West Bank, which Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast war. The Palestinians seek the West Bank as the heartland of a future state, a position that has wide international backing.
The angry U.S. reaction was sparked by comments by Miki Zohar, a junior lawmaker in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's nationalist Likud Party. Zohar is among a growing number of coalition members who reject the internationally backed idea of a Palestinian state and instead suggested that Israel annex the West Bank.
Under this version of a "one-state" scenario, the West Bank's more than 2 million Palestinians would receive expanded autonomy, but not hold full Israeli citizenship or be allowed to vote for the Knesset, or parliament. Although Netanyahu has not endorsed the one-state vision, many in his coalition do.
"The two-state solution is dead," Zohar told i24NEWS, an Israeli TV channel. "What is left is a one-state solution with the Arabs here as, not as full citizenship, because full citizenship can let them to vote to the Knesset."
"They will be able to vote and be elected in their city under administrative autonomy and under Israeli sovereignty and with complete security control," Zohar added. Israeli doves believe such a scenario would be both immoral and suicidal by threatening Israel's Jewish and democratic character.
"One state at this moment means apartheid," Ayman Odeh, leader of the Joint List of Arab parties in parliament, told foreign reporters Monday. "I think there needs to be great pressure for a Palestinian state to be established on the 1967 borders."
Lieberman said he received phone calls "from the entire world" about whether Zohar's proposal reflected the government's position. He called on the coalition to "clarify very clearly that there is no intention to impose Israeli sovereignty."
Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked, who supports a partial annexation of the West Bank, said she was unaware of any controversy with the Trump administration and that Israel in any case is free to do as it sees fit.
"We are not a banana republic. We are an independent and sovereign state," she told Israel's Army Radio station. "There is a supportive administration in the United States. That administration needs to back up the state of Israel and the government's policy."
For the past two decades, the international community has said the two-state solution is the only way to preserve Israel's Jewish and democratic character. Supporters of Israel's moderate opposition strongly agree. Likewise, the world has almost universally condemned Israeli settlements built on occupied land as obstacles to peace.
