To Annex Or Not

By: Larry Gordon

It’s an issue that has been on the Middle East drawing board for decades. But for a while last week, it was the center of discussion about what many people hope for on an almost daily basis, which is the tension between the U.S. and Israel, and especially between President Trump and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.

The subject was about the possibility that Trump and his foreign policy team will advocate for Israel to finally annex the territory the world calls the “West Bank,” but is in reality a part of Israeli territory.

The name West Bank is a geographic fiction that was created by a combination of the former British occupiers and the United Nations. If you take a peek online but don’t take too seriously what you read, you will see that this is a territory that has been “illegally occupied by Israel since 1967.” And if you read a little further on some of these inane posts, you will never see any mention that Israel is only there because both Egypt and Jordan attacked them with the hope of destroying the state of Israel and pushing the Jews into the sea.

They lost that war now known as the Six-Day War. And they lost that geographic area because that is what happens in war, especially when you attack and lose. For years now, it has been a “hot button” issue to discuss the annexation of these territories and force the world to refer to them by their Biblical names, Judea and Samaria.

It has been reported in The Wall Street Journal that a number of documents showed that Hamas’s Gaza chief Yahya Sinwar told associates just before the attack of October 7, 2023, that an “extraordinary act” was needed to derail Israel’s effort to establish diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia.

For many years after 1967, the belief was among both Republicans and Democrats that the only way to establish peace in the region was through a “two-state solution,” which entails creating a Palestinian state in what we refer to as Judea and Samaria.

But that thinking was misguided and largely emanated from the idea that nothing can happen in the region without Israel giving up valuable and historically significant land to the Palestinians based on a fake and made-up history of a people that never existed.

The fact is that Judea and Samaria are intrinsic parts of Biblical Israel, and the Jewish people have a right to that territory. But at the same time, why was it necessary at this time to introduce a bill in the Knesset calling for the annexation of these territories? And why did they introduce this legislation on the same day that Vice President JD Vance was in Jerusalem with Secretary of State Marco Rubio expected the next day? The legislation was introduced by the opposition parties in the Knesset to strain the relationship between Bibi and Trump and create friction. The move succeeded for a few minutes until they discovered it was merely a diplomatic ruse to damage the U.S.-Israel alliance and the good working relationship between Bibi and Trump.

Before October 7, it was understood that the Saudis were ready to move forward with joining the Abraham Accords regardless of the status of the Palestinians. This apparently unnerved the terror leaders of Hamas, and you know the rest of the story.

But now it’s two years later and Donald Trump is president. Steve Witkoff is his chief negotiator on foreign policy issues, and because so much of it involves Israel and more specifically the Jewish people, he brought his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, on board in a key role to bring people like his close friend and associate, Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) back into the process to establish diplomatic relations between Israel, the Saudis, and other Muslim countries. For the first time in decades, a path toward peace that cannot be sabotaged by violent terror groups like Hamas and the Palestinian Authority can finally come to fruition.

Yes, the so-called West Bank should be called Judea and Samaria, and it should exist under Israeli rule like the rest of the country whether you live in Haifa or Holon. But at this particular juncture, it’s not important that these territories be recognized by international entities as a biblical part of Israel.

At present, there are more than 600,000 Jews living in these areas. Those hills are alive with the sound of Torah and tefillah. There are vineyards and other expansive farmlands. People build and expand their homes, their children get married and live there, and their children are born there.

This is an undeniable reality. What does it matter what this or that community is called? You want to call it “occupied territory”—who cares what you call it? These are the lands of the Jewish people dating back more than 4,000 years. The UN representative from Fiji might object or protest. But more than anything else, he or she should make us laugh.

Okay, so the bad guys in the opposition in the Knesset want to bring down the Likud and Bibi, and apparently, they don’t give a damn how much it hurts Israel and the Jewish people when they tried to pass a bill that called for Israel to call these areas Judea and Samaria.

They are Judea and Samaria no matter what anyone says. Shiloh and Itamar, Hebron and Bethlehem are Jewish cities regardless of what the UN says.

There was no reason to force the issue. We do not need Trump or Witkoff or Abbas from the PA or any other terrorist in those Arab cities to tell us where they feel Jews should be allowed to live. A Jew can live anywhere we please, especially in Israel. The Trump administration and even MBS are finally coming to that realization.

Cities like Efrat, Neve Daniel, and Ariel will one day be recognized by the world as part of Israel. Right now, it’s not important and it’s a mistake to force the issue for political purposes. Judea and Samaria will be recognized as part of Israel before the Trump Hotel construction is completed on the seashore in Gaza.

There’s no rush. 

Read more of Larry Gordon’s articles at 5TJT.com. Follow 5 Towns Jewish Times on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter for updates and live videos. Comments, questions, and suggestions are welcome at 5TJT.com and on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.