With Donald Trump’s reelection and his nomination of former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee as ambassador to Israel, the idea of the country annexing the territories of Yehudah and Shomron, captured in 1967, has come anew to the fore.
Mr. Huckabee, an Evangelical Christian who has embraced Israel for decades, was interviewed last week on Galei Tzahal, the IDF radio network. He called his nomination “an extraordinary opportunity to represent my country in a land that I first fell in love with [years ago].”
In the past, Mr. Huckabee has stated that the captured territories, which the world calls “the West Bank,” comprise an integral part of Israel. And, asked in the interview about that belief, he acknowledged it but noted that, while he can influence outcomes, he does not set policy, as that responsibility will ultimately lie with the president.
Mr. Trump has not publicly taken a current position on annexation of the territories, but in 2020, an unnamed senior official in his first administration told the news website Axios that any Israeli annexations would have to happen “in the context of an offer to the Palestinians to achieve statehood based upon specific terms, conditions, territorial dimensions and generous economic support.”
If true, that would seem to indicate some sort of compromise: annexation of part of the territory and ceding part of it to a Palestinian state. But the President-elect’s choice of Mr. Huckabee could be a signal that he may now support unconditioned annexation.
Critics of such a move assert that annexation would not be recognized by international law (likely true), would raise the threat of violence (possibly, though not necessarily), undermine Israel’s standing in the world (surely), harm Israel’s tentative alliances with Arab states (unclear at best), and further reduce the chance of a “two-state solution” (obviously).
Others, though, maintain that incorporating Yehudah and Shomron into Israel will free the Arabs who live there from life under the PLO’s terror-supporting kleptocracy and provide them with full civil and legal rights as permanent residents of the state.
Annexation of territory, although it tends to cause much clutching of pearls in international circles, is not rare. In 1975, Morocco annexed the occupied Western Sahara. In 2014, Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula (and has since annexed other Ukrainian territory).
The reason there is a country called Vietnam today is the result of North Vietnam’s annexation of South Vietnam in 1976. And Israel, in 1981, annexed the Golan Heights (and was roundly and harshly criticized for that; as the old “National Brotherhood Week” song goes, “…and everybody hates the Jews”).
That said, annexation of Yehudah and Shomron does raise an issue that needs to be thought through.
There are some three million Arabs living in the territories. Israel’s current population is approximately nine million, two million of whom are Arab citizens. If annexation should take place, those three million souls, and their future generations, will presumably be offered citizenship. To do otherwise would only provide fodder for the larger world’s claim that Israel practices apartheid.
Israel would still be left with a Jewish majority and, assuming the current trend of high Jewish and relatively low Arab birthrates, that would continue to be the case for the foreseeable future. But there is also, of course, an unforeseeable future.
Arab residents of the territories might well opt to refuse citizenship; most Arabs in “East Jerusalem”—captured in 1967 and annexed by Israel—have opted to remain permanent residents rather than citizens. (Permanent residency, like possessing a “green card” in the US, affords many rights and services but not the right to vote in elections.)
But, on the other hand, the enticing image of major new political power could incentivize Arab residents of Yehudah and Shomron to purposely choose citizenship, in order to affect, even undermine, the state’s Jewish identity.
There are many pro-annexationists in Israel who have no problem with the idea of granting citizenship and its attendant voting rights to those residents. They maintain that estimates of the Palestinian population in the territories are exaggerated and there is no reason to fear the loss of a Jewish majority anytime soon.
But “anytime soon” is less than entirely reassuring. And we need to assured that annexation won’t yield, chalilah, the worst kind of “one-state solution.”
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