Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu chairs during the weekly cabinet meeting Sunday in the Jordan Valley, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Netanyahu convened his final pre-election cabinet meeting in a part of the West Bank that he’s vowed to annex if re-elected. National elections are Tuesday. (Amir Cohen/Pool via AP)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu chairs during the weekly cabinet meeting Sunday in the Jordan Valley, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Netanyahu convened his final pre-election cabinet meeting in a part of the West Bank that he’s vowed to annex if re-elected. National elections are Tuesday. (Amir Cohen/Pool via AP)

On vote eve, Netanyahu vows total West Bank settlement annex

Appears to be aimed at shoring up nationalist support the day before a do-over election.

  • By TIA GOLDENBERG Associated Press
  • Monday, September 16, 2019 5:08pm
  • Nation-World

By Tia Goldenberg / Associated Press

JERUSALEM — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed Monday to annex “all the settlements” in the West Bank, including an enclave deep in the heart of the largest Palestinian city, in a last-ditch move that appeared aimed at shoring up nationalist support the day before a do-over election.

Locked in a razor tight race and with legal woes hanging over him, Netanyahu is fighting for his political survival. In the final weeks of his campaign he has been doling out hard-line promises meant to draw more voters to his Likud party and re-elect him in Tuesday’s unprecedented repeat vote.

“I intend to extend sovereignty on all the settlements and the (settlement) blocs,” including “sites that have security importance or are important to Israel’s heritage,” Netanyahu said in an interview with Israeli Army Radio, part of an eleventh-hour media blitz.

Asked if that included the hundreds of Jews who live under heavy military guard amid tens of thousands of Palestinians in the volatile city of Hebron, Netanyahu responded “of course.”

Israelis head to the polls Tuesday in the second election this year, after Netanyahu failed to cobble together a coalition following April’s vote, sparking the dissolution of parliament.

Netanyahu has made a series of ambitious pledges in a bid to whip up support, including a promise to annex the Jordan Valley, an area even moderate Israelis view as strategic but which the Palestinians consider the breadbasket of any future state.

To protest that announcement, the Palestinian Authority held a Cabinet meeting in the Jordan Valley village of Fasayil on Monday, a day after Israel’s Cabinet met elsewhere in the valley.

“The Jordan Valley is part of Palestinian lands and any settlement or annexation is illegal,” Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh said at the start of the meeting. “We will sue Israel in international courts for exploiting our land and we will continue our struggle against the occupation on the ground and in international forums.”

Critics contend that Netanyahu’s pledges, if carried out, would enflame the Middle East and eliminate any remaining Palestinian hope of establishing a separate state. His political rivals have dismissed his talk of annexation as an election ploy noting that he has refrained from annexing any territory during his more than a decade in power.

Jordanian Foreign Minister Sufian al-Qudah condemned Netanyahu’s statement, saying such a move would “eliminate the remaining chances for peace” and fuel conflict.

Israel captured the West Bank and east Jerusalem from Jordan in the 1967 war.

Over 2.5 million Palestinians now live in occupied territories, in addition to nearly 700,000 Jewish settlers. Israel already has annexed east Jerusalem in a move that is not internationally recognized. The international community, along with the Palestinians, overwhelmingly considers Israeli settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem illegal.

Late Monday, Netanyahu visited Jerusalem’s Western Wall, the holiest place where Jews can worship, in a last-ditch appeal to religious nationalist supporters. In a Facebook video, he said the site “gives us the strength to continue and make a glorious country.”

Tuesday’s vote will largely be a referendum on Netanyahu, who this year surpassed Israel’s founding prime minister as the country’s longest-serving leader.

He has cast himself as the only candidate capable of facing Israel’s myriad challenges. But his opponents say his legal troubles — including a recommendation by the attorney general to indict him on bribery, fraud and breach of trust charges — loom too large for him to carry on.

— Associated Press writer Mohammed Daraghmeh in Ramallah, West Bank, contributed to this report.

Talk to us

> Give us your news tips.

> Send us a letter to the editor.

> More Herald contact information.

More in Nation-World

FILE - Britain's Queen Elizabeth II looks on during a visit to officially open the new building at Thames Hospice, Maidenhead, England July 15, 2022. Buckingham Palace says Queen Elizabeth II is under medical supervision as doctors are “concerned for Her Majesty’s health.” The announcement comes a day after the 96-year-old monarch canceled a meeting of her Privy Council and was told to rest. (Kirsty O'Connor/Pool Photo via AP, File)
Queen Elizabeth II dead at 96 after 70 years on the throne

Britain’s longest-reigning monarch and a rock of stability across much of a turbulent century died Thursday.

A woman reacts as she prepares to leave an area for relatives of the passengers aboard China Eastern's flight MU5735 at the Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport, Tuesday, March 22, 2022, in Guangzhou. No survivors have been found as rescuers on Tuesday searched the scattered wreckage of a China Eastern plane carrying 132 people that crashed a day earlier on a wooded mountainside in China's worst air disaster in more than a decade. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)
No survivors found in crash of Boeing 737 in China

What caused the plane to drop out of the sky shortly before it was to being its descent remained a mystery.

In this photo taken by mobile phone released by Xinhua News Agency, a piece of wreckage of the China Eastern's flight MU5735 are seen after it crashed on the mountain in Tengxian County, south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region on Monday, March 21, 2022. A China Eastern Boeing 737-800 with 132 people on board crashed in a remote mountainous area of southern China on Monday, officials said, setting off a forest fire visible from space in the country's worst air disaster in nearly a decade. (Xinhua via AP)
Boeing 737 crashes in southern China with 132 aboard

More than 15 hours after communication was lost with the plane, there was still no word of survivors.

Former Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., center, arrives at the U.S. Capitol in Washington D.C. with Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, right, the vice president-elect, on Wednesday morning. Gaetz withdrew from consideration Thursday, saying he was an unfair distraction to the transition. (Haiyun Jiang / The New York Times)
Matt Gaetz withdraws from consideration as attorney general

“It is clear that my confirmation was unfairly becoming a distraction,” Gaetz wrote Thursday on X.

Attendees react after Fox News called the presidential race for Former President Donald Trump, during an election night event at the Palm Beach County Convention Center in West Palm Beach, Fla., on Wednesday. Trump made gains in every corner of the country and with nearly every demographic group. (Haiyun Jiang / The New York Times)
Donald Trump returns to power, ushering in new era of uncertainty

Despite criminal convictions and fears of authoritarianism, Trump rode frustrations over the economy and immigration.

Voters cast their ballots at a polling place inside the Weisman Art Museum at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis on Election Day, Tuesday, Nov. 5 2024. Voters headed into polling stations on Tuesday in the closing hours of a presidential contest that both major parties said would take the country in dramatically different directions, capping a contentious and exhausting 107-day sprint that began when President Joe Biden abandoned his bid for a second term.  (Caroline Yang/The New York Times)
Live updates: Georgia called for Trump

The Daily Herald will be providing live updates on national election developments throughout Tuesday.

Liam Payne performs during the Jingle Ball at Madison Square Garden in New York in 2017. Payne, who rose to fame as a singer and songwriter for the British group One Direction, one of the best-selling boy bands of all time, died after falling from the third floor of a hotel in Buenos Aires on Wednesday. He was 31. (Chad Batka / The New York Times)
Liam Payne, 31, former One Direction singer, dies in fall in Argentina

Payne rose to fame as a member of one of the bestselling boy bands of all time before embarking upon a solo career.

In this photo taken from video provided by the Ukrainian Presidential Press Office, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy speaks to the nation in Kyiv, Ukraine, Sunday, Feb. 27, 2022. Street fighting broke out in Ukraine's second-largest city Sunday and Russian troops put increasing pressure on strategic ports in the country's south following a wave of attacks on airfields and fuel facilities elsewhere that appeared to mark a new phase of Russia's invasion. (Ukrainian Presidential Press Office via AP)
Ukraine wants EU membership, but accession often takes years

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s request has enthusiastic support from several member states.

FILE - Ukrainian servicemen walk by fragments of a downed aircraft,  in in Kyiv, Ukraine, Friday, Feb. 25, 2022. The International Criminal Court's prosecutor has put combatants and their commanders on notice that he is monitoring Russia's invasion of Ukraine and has jurisdiction to prosecute war crimes and crimes against humanity. But, at the same time, Prosecutor Karim Khan acknowledges that he cannot investigate the crime of aggression. (AP Photo/Oleksandr Ratushniak, File)
ICC prosecutor to open probe into war crimes in Ukraine

U.N. human rights chief Michelle Bachelet confirmed that 102 civilians have been killed.

FILE - Refugees fleeing conflict from neighboring Ukraine arrive to Zahony, Hungary, Sunday, Feb. 27, 2022. As hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians seek refuge in neighboring countries, cradling children in one arm and clutching belongings in the other, leaders in Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Moldova and Romania are offering a hearty welcome. (AP Photo/Anna Szilagyi, File)
Europe welcomes Ukrainian refugees — others, less so

It is a stark difference from treatment given to migrants and refugees from the Middle East and Africa.

Afghan evacuees disembark the plane and board a bus after landing at Skopje International Airport, North Macedonia, on Wednesday, Sept. 15, 2021. North Macedonia has hosted another group of 44 Afghan evacuees on Wednesday where they will be sheltered temporarily till their transfer to final destinations. (AP Photo/Boris Grdanoski)
‘They are safe here.’ Snohomish County welcomes hundreds of Afghans

The county’s welcoming center has been a hub of services and assistance for migrants fleeing Afghanistan since October.

FILE - In this April 15, 2019, file photo, a vendor makes change for a marijuana customer at a cannabis marketplace in Los Angeles. An unwelcome trend is emerging in California, as the nation's most populous state enters its fifth year of broad legal marijuana sales. Industry experts say a growing number of license holders are secretly operating in the illegal market — working both sides of the economy to make ends meet. (AP Photo/Richard Vogel, File)
In California pot market, a hazy line between legal and not

Industry insiders say the practice of working simultaneously in the legal and illicit markets is a financial reality.

Support local journalism

If you value local news, make a gift now to support the trusted journalism you get in The Daily Herald. Donations processed in this system are not tax deductible.