Israel to annex West Bank – Seymour Hersh

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government intends to announce the formal annexation of the West Bank in the coming weeks, a source has told the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh.

According to Hersh, Israel has been “fortified by bombs and funding” from Washington and is ramping up the expulsion of Palestinians from northern Gaza to the south of the enclave. Meanwhile, the religious parties that “dominate” Netanyahu’s cabinet are demanding full control over both occupied Palestinian territories.

“I was told this week by a well-informed Washington official that the Israeli leadership will formally annex the West Bank in the very near future – perhaps in two weeks – in the hope that the decisive step will end, once and for all, any talk of a two-state solution and will convince some in the skeptical Arab world to reconsider financing the planned reconstruction of Gaza,” Hersh wrote in an article on his Substack on Wednesday.

If true, the move would coincide with the last few weeks of US President Joe Biden’s administration and create a new “reality on the ground” by the time President-elect Donald Trump takes office in January. During his first term in the White House, Trump recognized Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights and moved the US embassy to Jerusalem. 

Israel declared war on Gaza-based Hamas last October, following a series of deadly raids by the Palestinian militants into Israeli territory. Around 1,100 Israelis died in the October 7 assault, while an estimated 250 were taken captive.

Almost 44,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since the start of the Israeli military operation, while another 104,000 more have been injured, according to local authorities. 

The Israeli military and police have also cracked down on Palestinians in the West Bank, which is run by Fatah, a Palestinian faction at odds with Hamas.

The West Bank and Gaza were annexed by Jordan and Egypt, respectively, after the 1949 conflict that ended with the newly formed State of Israel in control of most of the Mandate for Palestine territory. Israel captured both in the 1967 war. International law considers the West Bank and Gaza to be occupied territories, and multiple UN resolutions have called for the establishment of an independent Palestinian state in those territories.

Hersh is an internationally renowned investigative reporter who earned the Pulitzer Prize in 1970 for exposing the My Lai massacre and its cover-up by the US military during the Vietnam War. He has also reported on the abuses of Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib and the CIA’s domestic spying operations. More recently, Hersh has blamed the US for the September 2022 sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipelines between Russia and Germany, an allegation that Washington has denied.