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Lieberman: US warned us against annexing West Bank

March 7, 2017 at 12:27 pm

Former Israeli Defence Minister Avigdor Liebermann (L) and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu [Mahfouz Abu Turk/Apaimages]

The United States had warned Israel against imposing full sovereignty over the occupied West Bank, noting this would cause a “crisis”, the Sama news agency reported Israeli Defence Minister Avigdor Liebermann saying yesterday.

“We received a direct message… imposing Israeli sovereignty [on the West Bank] would mean an immediate crisis with the new [US] administration,” Lieberman told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee.

Israeli Knesset Member Miki Zohar [INSubcontinent/Twitter]

Israeli Knesset Member Miki Zohar [INSubcontinent/Twitter]

According to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, he added: “The coalition should clearly state that there is no intention to impose [Israeli] sovereignty [over the West Bank].”

Israeli Knesset Member Miki Zohar said that the two-state solution is dead, calling for annexing the occupied West Bank.

Lieberman said: “I am getting calls from all of the world wanting to know if this is the position of the coalition.”

—The decision to annex Judea and Samaria [the West Bank] would mean the integration of 2.7 million Palestinians in Israel.”

He went on to blame Hamas for the suffering of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and for the electricity shortage.

“We cannot have Hamas investing hundreds of millions of dollars in building tunnels and rockets and that we would pay from the taxpayers’ money for electricity and water for the Gaza Strip,” he said.

He added: “We dismantled settlements in Gaza and evacuated 10,000 Jews to Israel and returned back to 1967, but today there are some attempting to put pressure on us.”

Gaza has been under a strict Israeli and international-backed siege since mid-2007.