Also see our resources page on annexation here.
The dispossession of the Palestinians is a clear human rights issue. Since it began, Israel has been expanding further on to Palestinian land and ignoring the rights of the Palestinian people. For many years, there has been a confusion between the hopes of “two staters” who thought that one day there might be a Palestinian state next to an Israeli one and the “one staters” who believed in people living in equal human rights wherever they were and supported the right of Palestinian refugees to return home. Although Israel built more and more Israeli settlements, settler-only roads and infrastructure in the West Bank, much of the international community and the Palestinian Authority itself chose to believe that progress was being made to a viable “two state” solution.
Now, however, rumours of Israeli annexation of the West Bank have started to move into the planning stage, and the United States government, at first urged by Israel to support its expansion, itself wants to be the champion of a radical one-state solution that in no sense considers Palestinian rights. In the middle of the Coronavirus crisis, Israel has pressed on with developing settlements, and Trump’s administration is now pressing Israel to take most of the land in the West Bank, if not all of it.
This plan is entirely against the human rights of the Palestinians, against international law and numerous international judgements. It will be a decisive next step in the dispossession of Palestinians. Israel is not a planning to give the Palestinian citizens equal rights or a vote; this annexation will cement in the apartheid inequalities already created by the Israeli occupation.