Ministers to mull bill annexing all West Bank settlements

The bill, sponsored by MK Miri Regev (Likud), would also bar the government from restricting settlement construction due to diplomatic considerations, unless it received the Knesset’s explicit permission to do so.

A similar bill that Regev submitted to the previous Knesset failed to pass.

Regev said her bill is meant to prepare Israel to cope with the possibility of a unilateral Palestinian declaration of statehood that would be recognized by most of the world’s countries. If that happened, she wrote in the bill’s explanatory notes, “It would be appropriate for Israel to divest itself of responsibility for and control over Palestinian communities in the territories of Judea and Samaria [the West Bank], but at the same time, it shouldn’t abandon the communities in these territories that have a Jewish majority.

“Unilateral declaration of a Palestinian state would have an immediate and fateful impact on the daily lives of Israeli citizens living in Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria,” she continued. “In light of the fact that the position of [successive] Likud governments in Israel has been that under any future diplomatic agreement, Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria, including the security roads leading to them, will remain in territory under the State of Israel’s control, and Israeli sovereignty will be applied to them, we have an obligation to protect the lives of people living in these communities.”