West Bank Fence South Hebron.JPG
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On July 23, the IsraeliKnesset voted 71 to 13 in favor of a "non-binding" motion to "annex" the West Bank, where Palestinian Arabs have lived under Israeli military occupation since 1967.
Naturally, Knesset speaker Amir Ohana disagrees with that plain statement of fact. Channeling Adolf Hitler's ethno-nationalist claims on Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland, Austria, etc., Ohana proclaimed that "Jews cannot be the 'occupier' of a land that for 3,000 years has been called Judea."
Will Benjamin Netanyahu heed the "non-binding" will of the Knesset?
If so, what will the effects, both internationally and for the area's 2.1 million Arab inhabitants, look like?
Internationally, it's unlikely that most other regimes will recognize the annexation. Of the UN's member states, 147 recognize the state of Palestine as the "legitimate" ruling entity in the West Bank. The UN itself recognizes Palestine as an observer state, and it's a member state of Interpol and the International Criminal Court.
All of that tracks with Israel's own agreement, as a condition of its UN membership, to the borders set in 1947's UN Resolution 181. While it's never actually kept to that agreement and has always occupied territory outside those borders, those borders have never changed where international law is concerned.
UN-backed military intervention to liberate Palestine from Israeli occupation seems unlikely, but some regimes would likely levy sanctions on Israel over the matter.
And then there are those 2.1 million people.
For nearly 60 years, they've been treated as rightsless serfs in an apartheid system. They're ruled by the Israeli regime, with the "Palestinian Authority" -- which hasn't held an election in 19 years -- serving as a sop to "self-rule." Their property is subject to confiscation to provide Lebensraum for Israeli "settlers." Some of them are, occasionally, allowed to cross into Israel to do menial labor for their Israeli masters.
But if Israel annexed the West Bank, it seems to follow that its inhabitants would all instantly become Israeli citizens, with full freedom to travel at will between (for example) Ramallah and Tel Aviv.
Newly minted Israeli citizens of Arab ethnicity probably wouldn't continue to tolerate segregated facilities like "Jews Only" roads.
They'd presumably demand full and equal access to Israel's courts to contest property thefts based on ethnic differences.
And, of course, they'd presumably enjoy voting rights and representation in the Knesset.
I have to suspect Ohana doesn't see things quite that way.
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