After Golan, are Trump and Netanyahu coming for West Bank?

by Michael F. Brown | Lobby Watch | 27 March 2019

US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi speaks at the 2019 American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) Policy Conference, in Washington, DC, on 26 March.
Cheriss May SIPA

A warning: If Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is still in office in late 2020 or 2024, when President Donald Trump's time in office is coming to a close, there is a good chance the two leaders will declare American recognition of Israeli annexation of all or most of the occupied West Bank.

The precedent for such a move was put in place Monday as two significant anti-Arab events took place in Washington.

First, at the annual AIPAC conference, Democratic and Republican speakers alike ignored the Israeli occupation of Palestinian and Arab territory, choosing instead to rail against Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, who has been vilified for openly criticizing the powerful Israel lobby group's outsize influence.

A bipartisan consensus pretended that AIPAC was being silenced, turning on its head the reality that the organization is supporting legislation seeking to silence supporters of Palestinian rights.

Second, Netanyahu, while accepting Trump's proclamation of Israeli sovereignty over the occupied Golan Heights, laid the rhetorical and political groundwork for a similar move regarding the West Bank.

Netanyahu called Trump's unilateral declaration "a two-fold act of historic justice." Then, ominously, he continued that "Israel won the Golan Heights in a just war of self-defense and the Jewish people’s roots in the Golan go back thousands of years."

These words augur ill for Palestinians.

It is foreseeable that Netanyahu or a future Israeli leader could invoke the same claim towards the West Bank – even though it has no basis in international law.

Israel falsely argues that the 1967 war was "defensive," despite the fact it began with an Israeli surprise attack on Egypt.

In a 1976 interview, Israel's defense minister at the time of the war, Moshe Dayan, admitted that Israel's occupation of the Golan, as well as its provocations in the years preceding the war, were driven by a lust for conquest of land.

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