Sharon Barazani and Yedidia Mosawi While Mr Netanyahu "wants to push for all of it", Mr Gantz and Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi, his Blue and White party colleague, are a lot more reticent, she tells me. Israel rejects this, arguing the territory is "disputed" rather than occupied. Mr Etkes says this is the biggest boom in infrastructure projects carried out by Israel in the West Bank in two decades.More roads, water pipelines and sewage purification systems are being built, he says, to allow for significant future growth in settler numbers. Abbas on Trump peace plan: 'Conspiracy deal won't pass' "Such an attitude derives from not quite understanding the global village we live in," he says, referring to the strong counter-views of much of the outside world to any annexation. This adds to the significance of the views of Benny Gantz, the defence minister and alternate prime minister due to take over from Mr Netanyahu late next year. They see little gain from unilateral annexation, while leaving Israel's global image tarnished.But retired Israeli Brigadier-General Yossi Kuperwasser believes the numbers of Palestinians caught in any unilateral application of sovereignty would be "negligible". The pandemic demonstrates that Israelis and Turks have no choice but to recognize that cooperation between them is necessary, and that politics should be put aside and relations restored to what they were a decade ago.
How is the groundwork being laid ahead of what is potentially one of the most significant policy moves in the region in years?My journey starts along the main highway heading south out of Jerusalem. More history-making could lie on the road ahead.
Later on, Israel agreed to According to Ministry of Tourism data obtained by Al-Monitor, until the Marmara incident in 2010, about 600,000 Israeli tourists visited Turkey every year. It will bring us closer. Israel and the Palestinians signed a peace accord in 1993 but a final treaty is still to be reached "It's not far to Efrat. I ask about Mr Netanyahu's plans. In the end, Israelis don’t have a real alternative to what Turkey has to offer.” “Israelis love Turkey,” Dror Nimni, an Israeli tour guide, told Al-Monitor in conversation from Ankara. "They would tell us to get special permits and approvals. Elizabeth Hagedorn | Beirut explosion | Aug 13, 2020 The latter - in particular neighbouring Jordan - have voiced vehement opposition to any form of annexation, raising concerns about regional stability if the move goes ahead. In my opinion, the trend will only grow in the coming years.” And the other is sealing up and preventing the expansion of Palestinian communities," he says. How Israel's plans to draw its borders will shape life with the Palestinians.
“The United States is in principle the biggest draw from Ben Gurion Airport, and for an Israeli citizen the option of a flight to the United States that connects through Europe is not available as a result of US President [Donald] Trump’s decision to close off the United States to anyone coming from Europe. Mr Gantz's Blue and White party, whose success in the elections was partly down to left-wing votes, is "walking a tight-rope" on the issue says Lahav Harkov, diplomatic correspondent at the Jerusalem Post. he asks holding up his fruit. Mr Gantz is thought to be less willing to back sweeping unilateral annexation plans and he wants co-ordination with Washington and Arab countries that have ties with Israel. "Sovereignty - do it right! The Israeli prime minister's office and the parliament are off a junction heading east. Settlers say a Palestinian state in the West Bank would pose a threat Now, in a bid to increase international pressure to avert annexation, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas says the PA is no longer bound by agreements with Israel and the US, including on security. Israel is planning a new settlement, called Givat Eitam, north-east of where I walk with Mohammed. We watch Eastern European workers carry huge steel beams. A decade after the crisis, it seems that Israelis have “In the period before the coronavirus crisis there were at least five daily flights from Tel Aviv to Istanbul,” said Shlomo Germon, an Israeli travel agent. The result: 10 Turkish activists were killed and an unprecedented diplomatic crisis between Jerusalem and Ankara ensued. But it seems that the jump in 2019 was not coincidental. Most of the big settlement blocs are just across the Green Line, the armistice line from before the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, when Israel captured the West Bank from Jordanian control. But President Trump's plan potentially awards American recognition to Israel for all the settlements and the strategically vital Jordan Valley - before any negotiations with the Palestinians.
They say they are pulling out of previous agreements, risking their own fragile governing authority. He says annexation would amount to the "destruction" of a future Palestinian state, and suggests accepting it would leave the PA becoming "a bunch of traitors - and we will not be".What happens next?
A group of tourists walk past Hagia Sophia as they go toward the historical Sultanahmet district, Istanbul, Turkey, July 28, 2020. Israelis feel at home in Turkey and no diplomatic crisis between the two countries can change this. Orange rooftops curve across a hilltop to the south-west - the neat suburban layout of the Israeli settlement of Efrat. Much of the global community looks on with growing concern over what they see as a clear violation of international law, while warnings echo of a "hot summer" of boiling tensions.
I arrive in the shadow of a huge bridge being constructed - a doubling of the road running from the Begin Highway that forges its way into the West Bank, connecting Jerusalem to Efrat and the other settlements further south.We stand a few metres from a section of the separation barrier - an 8m-high (26ft) concrete wall here that conceals from our view Palestinian homes on the other side, as cars bearing Israeli number plates zoom across the bridge above us.This is the "whole story of the West Bank in the last 53 years", according to Dror Etkes, who runs the Israeli non-governmental organisation Kerem Navot (Navot's Vineyard - named after a Biblical figure murdered for his land), which monitors settlement construction.