Source: NPR
BY DANIEL ESTRIN
When it came down to a final issue for Israeli voters to ponder before Tuesday’s elections, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made an extraordinary campaign pledge: If re-elected, he said on Saturday, he would annex Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank.
Such a move would represent a dramatic, far-right policy change for Israel, staking a permanent claim over lands Palestinians demand for their own state.
Even if it is an election tactic to energize his nationalist base, Netanyahu’s annexation pledge is a fitting final chord to a decade of his administration, which began with a reluctant embrace of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and ended with the chances of such an outcome dwindling to a new low point.
Categories: Israel, Middle East, Palestine
Hope has been dead a long time