Netanyahu vows retaliation ahead of more Palestine recognitions at U.N.

 

Israel reacted angrily to the recognitions by several major Western allies of a Palestinian state and pledged to take retaliatory measures as a second round of recognitions are expected at a U.N. summit in New York on Monday.

The announcements by the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia on Sunday that they would recognize Palestine as a sovereign state were telegraphed in advance as part of an effort, led by France, to build momentum toward a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that has never seemed more out of reach. French President Emmanuel Macron said he plans to follow suit at a high-level conference he is co-hosting with Saudi Arabia on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly on Monday afternoon. Other European countries are also joining in.

While long sought, and applauded, by the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah, the moves are largely symbolic, analysts say. It’s unclear what effect, if any, they will have on the ground, where Israel is expanding settlements in the West Bank and pulverizing Gaza. But for Israel, the recognitions underscore the depths of its international isolation as its war in Gaza nears the two-year mark. Israeli officials across the political spectrum have blasted the diplomatic declarations as a reward for terrorism, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faces intense pressure from his far-right partners to annex all or part of the West Bank in response.

“A Palestinian state will not be established,” Netanyahu said in a statement Sunday. “The response to the latest attempt to impose on us a terror state in the heart of our land will be given after my return from the United States.”

Netanyahu, who traveled to the United States for the General Assembly, is reportedly meeting with President Donald Trump at the White House on Sept. 29 before he heads back to Israel.

“I have a clear message to those leaders who recognize a Palestinian state after the horrific massacre of October 7: You are granting a huge reward to terror,” his statement added. “And I have another message for you: It will not happen. There will not be a Palestinian state west of the Jordan.”

The prime minister has spent his political career stymieing efforts to reach a two-state solution with the Palestinians, and he promised Sunday to continue to do so. He bragged that the number of Israeli settlements in the West Bank — widely considered illegal under international law — had doubled during his tenure.

Netanyahu’s allies and foes were united this week in their condemnation of the statehood recognitions, though they remain sharply divided over what to do about them.

Far-right ministers in Netanyahu’s coalition, who are key to the survival of his government and therefore hold disproportionate influence over Israeli policy, urged the prime minister to seize the moment to push through a change they have long sought: the annexation of the occupied West Bank.

“The days are over when Britain and other countries determine our future … the only response to an anti-Israeli move is sovereignty over the homeland territories of the Jewish people in Judea and Samaria, and removing the folly of the Palestinian state idea from the agenda forever,” Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said in a statement Sunday, referring to the West Bank by its biblical names. “Mr. Prime Minister, this is the time, and it is in your hands.”

Far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir went a step further, calling for the “complete dismantling” of the Palestinian Authority as well. He said he intended to put annexation on the agenda for the next cabinet meeting.

The Yesha Council, a political body representing Israeli settlers in the West Bank, issued a more explicit threat: “A government that does not respond by applying broad sovereignty to the declarations of establishing a terror state in the heart of the country will lose its right to exist.”

The head of a local council for settlers in the northern West Bank announced the establishment of a new settler outpost in reaction. “While distant countries engage in empty declarations, here in Karnei Shomron we are engaged in building and action,” Karnei Shomron Council Head Yonatan Kuznitz said in a statement. Local officials said more measures to advance Jewish settlement in the West Bank would be forthcoming.

The public discussion in Israel was more muted Monday, as Israelis prepared for Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year, which starts at sundown.

Calls to annex the West Bank had mounted among the Israeli right wing over the past month, as the date of the U.N. summit on the two-state solution — and the planned recognitions of a Palestinian state — neared. Smotrich, whom Netanyahu gave control of a department in the Defense Ministry with power over civilian affairs in parts of the West Bank, unveiled a plan this month to annex 82 percent of the occupied territory. Palestinian cities, which would be left under limited Palestinian rule, would essentially become cantons, cut off from each other and the rest of the West Bank. Palestinians living in the areas Smotrich wants to annex would not be given full citizenship rights under his vision.

But Netanyahu also faces pressure from Arab countries he has long courted not to go through with annexation. He has staked a significant part of his political legacy on the success of the Abraham Accords, a set of agreements brokered during Trump’s first term with a handful of Arab countries to formalize diplomatic relations with Israel. The United Arab Emirates, the linchpin of the accords, warned this month that annexation would be a “red line” and could jeopardize its relations with Israel and progress on regional integration.

Saudi Arabia, which Netanyahu and Trump hope to convince to normalize relations with Israel, is co-sponsoring Monday’s U.N. conference and called Sunday for more countries to recognize a Palestinian state. U.K. Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper told the BBC on Monday that she warned Israel not to annex any part of the West Bank in response.

Opposition politicians in Israel blasted the recognition announcements Sunday while blaming the Israeli government for creating the conditions for such a momentous diplomatic shift. Yair Lapid, head of the opposition, called the unilateral recognitions of a Palestinian state by Western countries this week Israel’s “most severe diplomatic crisis ever.”

“A functioning Israeli government could have prevented this, through smart and serious work, professional diplomatic dialogue, and effective public diplomacy,” he said in a statement.

A forum representing families of Israeli hostages in Gaza decried the recognitions, which they said should have been contingent on Hamas’s release of the hostages.

Hamas and allied militants from Gaza killed about 1,200 people and took 251 hostage in the attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, that shook Israel and prompted its devastating retaliatory war in Gaza. Israeli attacks there have killed more than 65,000 people, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants but says the majority of the dead are women and children. Israel’s war has leveled most of the enclave, where parts of the population are experiencing famine, according to the global hunger monitor, due largely to Israeli restrictions on humanitarian aid.

The brutality of the war has tarnished Israel’s image internationally — but there are no indications the government plans to wind it down soon. The Israeli military is moving to conquer Gaza City, an operation that has already displaced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, according to estimates by Israel and international organizations.

Netanyahu has been accused by opponents, Arab mediators and Palestinian parties of repeatedly scuttling ceasefire talks aimed at ending the war. This month, Israel conducted airstrikes in Qatar, one of the mediating countries, targeting Hamas leaders involved in the talks in what was widely seen as a major blow to prospects for diplomacy.

Hamas and the Palestinian Authority have both celebrated the recognition announcements as significant steps.

In an interview aired Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Macron argued that the recognition process has isolated Hamas and would help move ceasefire talks forward.

“If we don’t offer them a political perspective and such a recognition,” Macron said of the Palestinian people, “they will be completely trapped by Hamas as a unique option.”

Macron and U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer have hit back at Israel’s suggestions that their diplomatic moves were a gift to Hamas, with both saying Hamas does not want a state alongside Israel and would have no place in the future of Palestinian governance. The recognition process involved the Palestinian Authority committing to undertake reforms, Macron said on “Face the Nation.”

The moves by France, the U.K. and others mean little if they are not backed up by concrete action, analysts and Palestinian politicians say — and if the United States continues to give Israel carte blanche to prosecute its war in Gaza and extend its control in the West Bank. The Trump administration has made clear it opposes the moves by Western allies to recognize a Palestinian state. It can use its veto at the U.N. Security Council to block the Palestinian Authority’s bid to give it full membership at the United Nations.

“Israel is only concerned about what will be the American reaction or response,” Ahmed Majdalani, a member of the executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization and a close confidant of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, said in an interview last month. “The American administration is giving the full political and diplomatic cover, and financial and military support, to Israel — and that’s why Israel considers itself above international law.”