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Applying Israeli Law on Jewish Communities in the West Bank Does Not Mean Annexation
(Ha'aretz) Brig.-Gen. (res.) Yossi Kuperwasser - Israel and the U.S. maintain that there won't be any significant progress in the peace negotiations unless we make a major effort to change the Palestinian narrative, since it is the main obstacle to a final status agreement. According to this narrative, there is no Jewish nation and there was no Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel, and therefore there is no justification for the existence of a Jewish nation-state in the region where the only native people are the Palestinians. Absent the possibility of advancing a peace process, moves may be expected to apply Israeli law on the Jewish communities in the West Bank. (The Americans are not making any effort to counter the impression that they would accept such a move.) While some have called such a move "annexation," this is misleading. There is a significant legal difference between applying laws and annexation. Applying Israeli law won't change the situation on the ground and will grant the Jewish communities the status enjoyed by Israeli communities within the 1967 lines and in Jerusalem. It does not change the basic idea embodied in the Oslo Accords that this is disputed territory awaiting negotiations to determine its final status. The vast majority of the Israeli public does not support annexation and Israel has no intention of annexing areas densely populated by Palestinians or applying Israeli law on them. The writer, former head of the IDF Military Intelligence Research Division and director general of the Strategic Affairs Ministry, is director of the Project on Regional Middle East Developments at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.