Yossi Alpher is an independent security analyst. He is the former director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, a former senior official with the Mossad, and a former IDF intelligence officer. Views and positions expressed here are those of the writer, and do not necessarily represent APN's views and policy positions.

Read the JTA article below (originally posted HERE), and watch the New Israel Fund video "The Truth About Annexation" narrated by Mandy Patinkin, member of the Americans for Peace Now Board of Directors,

 (Note: The article includes a link to the Jerusalem Post coverage of his receiving the APN Yitzhak Rabin Peace Award in 2014.)

According to Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the bulk of his suggested West Bank annexation is making the Jordan Valley (approximately 30% of the West Bank) an integral part of the state of Israel. Netanyahu’s rationale for annexing the Jordan Valley is that it would bolster Israel’s security. In this paper, APN intern Avraham Spraragen explains why annexing the Jordan Valley would hinder Israeli security rather than boost it.

INTRODUCTION

On September 10, 2019, a week before the second of three unprecedented Israeli Knesset elections within a year, Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu announced in a televised press conference his “intention, after the establishment of a new government, to apply Israeli sovereignty to the Jordan Valley.”^[1]

In his address to the nation, Netanyahu presented a map that demarcated the proposed swaths of land, constituting 1,236,278 hectares or 22.3 percent of the West Bank, to be annexed.^[2] This unilateral annexation plan, a blatant violation of international law and the possible death knell of a two-state solution, would entail an Israeli absorption of 30 settlements, including 12,778 settlers, as well as of 18 illegal outposts.

Following the third election in March, a unity deal was reached between political rivals Netanyahu and former IDF Chief of Staff turned Alternate Prime Minister Benny Gantz for the establishment of a new government. Per Clause 29 of the unity deal, the fragile Netanyahu-Gantz government is set to “bring the agreement reached with the United States on the application of sovereignty [in the West Bank] … for the approval of the cabinet and/or the Knesset starting July 1, 2020.”^[3] Days away from this July 1st “deadline” to begin advancing unilateral Israeli annexation of parts of the West Bank, one of the chief annexation scenarios considered by the Israeli government awaiting a “green light” from U.S. President Donald J. Trump, is a proposal to annex the Jordan Valley.^[4]

For most of the month of May, Israel had fewer than 50 new coronavirus cases daily and by the end of the month numbers were reduced to single digits. Then localized outbreaks, particularly linked to schools, began to bring back the threat of the virus. Israel is now undeniably into its second wave, with the number of daily new cases reaching over 300 for the first time since April 23^rd. Over the course of the pandemic, three measures have emerged as key in controlling the spread of COVID-19: testing, contact tracing and lockdowns. Israel was among the top countries in the world on these three fronts, which largely explains the management of the first wave. How will these measures stand up to another increase in cases?

APN COVID REPORTS

#12 - Israel's second wave: can and will it be contained (June 26, 2020)

#11 - Palestinian Children Prisoners in Israel (May 26, 2020)

#10 - Israeli opinion during COVID-19 (May 13, 2020)

#9 - Upholding human rights in the courts (May 8, 2020)

#8 - What Israel can learn from countries with a similar incidence of the virus (May 6, 2020)

#7 - Israel and neighbors in the age of COVID-19 (May 1, 2020)

#6 - The pandemic’s economic effect on the West Bank (April 30, 2020)

#5 - Israel and Palestine: A snapshot in numbers (April 28, 2020)

#4 - How much is the new unity government actually about COVID-19? (April 27, 2020)

#3 - The situation in East Jerusalem (April 20, 2020)

#2 - The effect of defunding the World Health Organization on Israel and Palestine (April 16, 2020)

#1 - How accurate is Coronavirus reporting in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza? (April 14, 2020)

NEWS NOSH - "CORONA NEWS/QUICKEES"

APN's daily news review from Israel includes updates on coronavirus-related matters, currently including a special section for it

Americans for Peace Now (APN) extends its gratitude and appreciation to 191 members of the House of Representatives for the letter they sent to Israel's government, sharply criticizing its intention to annex parts of the West Bank and urging it to reconsider its unilateral annexation plan.

Israel’s peace camp this week lost one of its icons. Zeev Sternhell, one of the world’s leading scholars on fascism and one of Israel’s clearest anti-occupation and anti-settlements voices, died in Jerusalem at the age of 85.

Professor Sternhell was closely associated with Israel’s Peace Now movement and one of its first members.

In 2008, four months after winning the lucrative Israel Prize, he was the target of a violent hate crime. A pipe bomb planted at the doorstep of his Jerusalem home injured him. Next to the bomb and around Sternhell’s home, fliers were found promising a million shekels prize to anyone who would kill a Peace Now activist.

Years later, American-born Jewish terrorist Yaakov Teitel, now serving a life imprisonment sentence, admitted to planting the bomb.

In 2016, in a Haaretz op-ed, Sternhell publicly came to the defense of Americans for Peace Now and the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem when he defended their appearance before the UN Security Council to talk about West Bank settlement construction and violations of Palestinian human rights.

To analyze the state of affairs among the Palestinian public and its leadership as Israel moves to annex large swathes of the West Bank, join APN’s Zoom webinar with leading Palestinian pollster Khalil Shikaki, the director of the Ramallah-based Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research.

Friday, June 26, 12:00 pm (Eastern)

REGISTER HERE

Pummeled by the Israeli occupation, Palestinian Authority diplomatic ineptness in the West Bank and Hamas governance incompetence in the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian public is now facing the specter of West Bank annexation. Mahmoud Abbas’ PLO, utterly committed to two-state diplomacy with Israel, is hard-pressed to respond to this paradigm-changing move by the Israeli government.