Israel\u2019s far-right Finance Minister, Bezalel Smotrich, warned, yesterday that Israel would annex the occupied West Bank if the international community formally recognises a Palestinian state at next month\u2019s United Nations General Assembly (UNGA).<\/p>\n
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\u201cYou have no chance, there will be no Palestinian state,\u201d Smotrich declared at a news conference, addressing countries planning to support Palestinian statehood at the UN.<\/p>\n
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\u201cYou will not decide from overseas what the future of the Jewish people looks like,\u201d said Smotrich, who is known for advocating the expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank\u2014settlements deemed illegal under international law.<\/p>\n
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Speaking near the Israeli settlement of Ma\u2019ale Adumim, east of Jerusalem, he added: \u201cIf you recognise a Palestinian state in September, our response will be to assert full Israeli sovereignty over all areas of Judea and Samaria.<\/p>\n
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\u201cJudea and Samaria\u201d is the term used by Israel to refer to the West Bank, which it has occupied since 1967.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Several countries, including France, Canada, and Australia, have signaled their intention to recognise a Palestinian state at the UNGA in response to Israel\u2019s military campaign in Gaza.<\/p>\n
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They argued such recognition could help advance the long-sought two-state solution, envisioning a peaceful coexistence between Israel and a future Palestinian state.<\/p>\n
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However, both the current Israeli government and Hamas, the Palestinian militant group, have consistently rejected that vision.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Israel\u2019s far-right Finance Minister, Bezalel Smotrich, warned, yesterday that Israel would annex the occupied West Bank if the international community formally recognises a Palestinian state at next month\u2019s United Nations General Assembly (UNGA). \u201cYou have no chance, there will be no Palestinian state,\u201d Smotrich declared at a news conference, addressing countries planning to support […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":213884,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-346792","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346792","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=346792"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346792\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":346793,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346792\/revisions\/346793"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/213884"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=346792"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=346792"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=346792"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}