Benjamin Netanyahu’s incoming government put West Bank settlement expansion at the top of its list of priorities on Wednesday, vowing to legalize dozens of outposts and annex the territory as part of its coalition deal with its right-wing allies. The coalition agreements, released a day before the government is to be sworn into office, included contentious judicial reforms, as well as generous stipends for charedim who prefer to learn instead of work. The package laid the groundwork for what is expected to be a stormy beginning for Netanyahu’s government and could put it at odds with large parts of the Israeli public and Israel’s closest allies abroad. Its lengthy list of guidelines was led by a commitment to “advance and develop settlement in all parts of the land of Israel,” including Yehuda and Shomrim the biblical names for the West Bank. Israel captured the West Bank in 1967 along with the Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem. The Palestinians seek the West Bank as the heartland of a future independent state. In the decades since, Israel has constructed dozens of Jewish settlements there that are now home to around 500,000 Israelis living alongside around 2.5 million Palestinians. The United States already has warned the incoming government against taking steps that could undermine the dwindling hopes for the establishment of an independent Palestinian state. There was no immediate Palestinian or U.S. comment. Netanyahu’s new government — the most religious and right-wing in Israel’s history — is made up of charedi parties, a far-right ultranationalist religious faction affiliated with the West Bank settler movement and his Likud party. It is to be sworn in on Thursday. In the coalition agreement between Likud and Religious Zionism, Netanyahu pledges to legalize settlement outposts considered illegal even by the Israeli government. He also promises to annex the West Bank “while choosing the timing and considering the national and international interests of the state of Israel.” The deal also grants favors to Itamar Ben-Gvir, a far-right politician who will be in charge of the national police force as the newly created national security minister. It includes a commitment to expand and vastly increase government funding for the Israeli settlements in Chevron, where a tiny Jewish community lives in heavily fortified neighborhoods amid tens of thousands of Palestinians. Ben-Gvir lives in a nearby settlement. The agreement also includes a clause pledging to change the country’s anti-discrimination laws to allow businesses to refuse service to people “because of a religious belief.” The legislation drew outrage earlier this week when members of Ben-Gvir’s party said the law could be used to deny services to LGBTQ people. Netanyahu has said he will not let the law pass, but nonetheless left the clause in the coalition agreement. Among its other changes is placing Bezalel Smotrich, a settler leader who heads Religious Zionism party, in a newly created ministerial post overseeing West Bank settlement policy. In an op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal, Smotrich said there would be no “changing the political or legal status” of the West Bank, indicating that annexation would not immediately take place. But he leveled criticism at the “feckless military government” that controls key aspects of life for Israeli settlements — such as construction, expansion and infrastructure projects. Smotrich, who will also be finance minister, is expected […]

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