Israel’s Manifest Destiny in Yehudah and Shomron

Israel’s finance minister Bezalel Smotrich created a controversy last week when he called for Israel to assert sovereignty over most of the West Bank, i.e., Judah and Samaria. He described his call “as a preventative step against the diplomatic assault that’s planned against us.”

Smotrich was referring to international announcements, including by longstanding Israeli allies like Britain and France, that they will recognize a Palestinian state later this month roughly comprising the Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank. He said his avowed goal was “to remove, once and for all, this idea of a Palestinian state.”

Smotrich’s statement triggered some nasty responses from several Arab states that had recently warmed up to Israel, in particular the United Arab Emirates which had been a prime mover in the negotiations leading to the Abraham Accords.

A UAE spokesman said that Annexation of the West Bank would be a “red line for the UAE ...and would severely undermine the vision and spirit of [the] Accords, end the pursuit of regional integration and would alter the widely shared consensus on what the trajectory of this conflict should be – two states living side by side in peace, prosperity and security.”

We don’t know whether Smotrich reflected the views of Prime Minister Netanyahu and or the Israeli government when he spoke. And it is certainly not for us to choose for Israel. But we do think it is important to note several things.

For one thing, there were dire predictions about what would happen if Jerusalem was recognized as the capital of Israel and the American Embassy in Tel Aviv was relocated there. Both took place without significant fallout.

For another, Hamas is an implacable foe of Israel and nothing short of both the obliteration of Hamas’s ability to commit violence against Israel and Israel’s possessing overwhelmingly defensible borders would be reasonable outcomes of the current hostilities.

The long and short of it is, that if Israel decides to annex the West Bank they should be applauded, if only not to reward the Palestinian barbarity of Oct. 7, 2023.