Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he plans to annex West Bank settlements in Hebron, the largest Palestinian city, if he is returned to power in today’s general election.
In the final hours of his election campaign, the Likud leader told Israeli Army Radio that he plans to annex “all the settlements” in the West Bank, including Hebron and Kiryat Arba.
His controversial pledge was given short shrift by Palestinians. “The Jordan Valley is part of Palestinian lands and any settlement or annexation is illegal,” said the Palestinian Authority’s Mohammed Shtayyeh.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
“We will sue Israel in international courts for exploiting our land and we will continue our struggle against the occupation on the ground and in international forums.”
Hanan Ashrawi of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation told Al Jazeera that Netanyahu is pandering to his “extreme right-wing racist base” and that, due to the presence of Donald Trump in the White House, Israel no longer needed to “fly below the radar” with such strategies.
Israelis are heading to the polls for the second time this year after Netanyahu failed to form a coalition following April's vote, causing the dissolution of parliament.
The prime minister is beset by legal problems, including a recommendation by the attorney general to indict him on bribery, fraud and breach of trust charges. Fox News says that the right-winger is “locked in a tight race” with “legal woes hanging over him” and “fighting for his political survival”. The most recent polls suggest that after the election, Netanyahu will not have a majority, The Times says.
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz says Netanyahu’s Likud party has recorded messages to be sent out today to hundreds of thousands of voters’ phones warning them of very high voter turnout among Arab communities.
The message, scheduled to be sent out at 4:30pm, will say: “According to the information we have, the voter turnout in the Arab community is very high and also in the left-wing strongholds who want to replace right-wing rule.”
-
Claude Code: the viral AI coding app making a splash in techThe Explainer Engineers and non-coders alike are helping the app go viral
-
‘Human trafficking isn’t something that happens “somewhere else”’Instant Opinion Opinion, comment and editorials of the day
-
What would a credit card rate cap mean for you?the explainer President Donald Trump has floated the possibility of a one-year rate cap
-
How Iran protest death tolls have been politicisedIn the Spotlight Regime blames killing of ‘several thousand’ people on foreign actors and uses videos of bodies as ‘psychological warfare’ to scare protesters
-
The Board of Peace: Donald Trump’s ‘alternative to the UN’The Explainer Body set up to oversee reconstruction of Gaza could have broader mandate to mediate other conflicts and create a ‘US-dominated alternative to the UN’
-
The high street: Britain’s next political battleground?In the Spotlight Mass closure of shops and influx of organised crime are fuelling voter anger, and offer an opening for Reform UK
-
Israel’s E1 zone in the West Bank: the death of the two-state solution?The Explainer Controversial new settlement in occupied territories makes future Palestinian state unviable, critics claim
-
‘The security implications are harder still to dismiss’Instant Opinion Opinion, comment and editorials of the day
-
‘Let 2026 be a year of reckoning’Instant Opinion Opinion, comment and editorials of the day
-
What have Trump’s Mar-a-Lago summits achieved?Today’s big question Zelenskyy and Netanyahu meet the president in his Palm Beach ‘Winter White House’
-
What is the global intifada?The Explainer Police have arrested two people over controversial ‘globalise the intifada’ chants
