Michael Koplow
“When the previous Binyamin Netanyahu-led Israeli government was moving toward annexing parts of the West Bank in 2019 and the first part of 2020, it was easy for everyone to see what was transpiring. The proposals floating around were straightforward and simple to comprehend, whether it was talk of annexing specific spots such as the Jordan Valley or the Etzion settlement bloc, or absorbing all of Area C, or incorporating 30% of the West Bank into Israel based on the map in President Trump’s Peace to Prosperity plan, or applying sovereignty and Israeli civilian law to all 127 recognized Israeli settlements. Any of these measures would have immediately transformed the legal status of parts of the West Bank and made them indistinguishable in Israeli law from Israel inside the Green Line, and this made these plans and their potential impacts easy to understand and evaluate.”
