Israel has every right to annex the West Bank.

If other countries want to impose a Palestinian terror state on Israel, then Israel will have to do what it has to do.

The Cave of the Patriarchs, known to Jews by its Biblical name Cave of Machpelah, is a series of caves situated in the heart of the Old City of Hebron. (photo: Dan Rosenstein/Unsplash)

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The prospect of Israel annexing the West Bank, as the Israeli government is reportedly contemplating, is not some isolated or abstract idea. It is the latest chapter in a story that began long before the modern State of Israel and long before today’s deceptive debates.

For centuries, the Jewish People endured relentless persecution — pogroms, expulsions, blood libels, forced conversions, and ultimately the Holocaust.

This grotesque antisemitism drove a collective yearning to return to our ancestral homeland: a place where Jews could live freely, without harassment, massacres, or fear. That yearning was not just emotional or symbolic; it was historical and spiritual.

The reestablishment of Israel in 1948 was thus the culmination of millennia of unbroken Jewish connection to the land and an unshakable need for sovereignty.

From the moment of independence, Arab states rejected Israel’s existence. Instead of choosing coexistence, they launched a war of annihilation in 1948, hoping to push the Jews into the sea. Israel survived. It survived again in 1967, in 1973, and in 1982 — wars that cost thousands of Israeli lives and led Israel to develop one of the most advanced militaries in the world. This military strength has never been about conquest; it has always been about survival in a region where too many of our neighbors openly dream of a world without Jews.

Then came the Oslo Accords in the 1990s, agreements between Israel and the Palestinians that were sold as a roadmap to peace, but delivered bloodshed instead. Namely the Second Intifada, fueled by Palestinian leaders who rejected compromise and reconciliation, and featuring years of Palestinian suicide bombings, shootings, and terror attacks that slaughtered more than a thousand innocent Israelis. To protect its citizens, Israel was effectively forced to wall off Gaza and the West Bank. These barriers, derided by antisemitic critics, saved countless lives.

In 2005, Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza, giving Palestinians there an unprecedented opportunity to govern themselves and build a society free from occupation. Instead, Hamas violently seized power, turned Gaza into a terror fortress, and — alongside Palestinian Islamic Jihad — launched war after war against Israel.

This campaign of Islamist terror culminated on October 7, 2023, when Palestinians from Gaza invaded Israeli communities, massacred families, raped women, burned children alive, and kidnapped babies and grandparents. Gaza lies in ruins today not because Israel wanted war, but because Hamas demanded it.

All in all, there is a cause and effect at play that the world refuses to see: Every antisemitic action has been followed by a Jewish response to those actions. Every attempt to break us has only built us. Jewish success, sovereignty, and self-sufficiency are our enduring answer to antisemitism and anti-Zionism.

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People love to pine about “Israeli occupation,” but they refuse to acknowledge history. There were thriving Jewish communities in Hebron, Shiloh, and other towns in Judea and Samaria (also known as the West Bank) long before the State of Israel was founded.

In 1929, the Hebron massacre resulted in more than 60 Jewish deaths, as well as scores seriously wounded or maimed, Jewish homes pillaged, and synagogues ransacked. The massacre was perpetrated by Arabs incited to violence by a blood libel that Jews were planning to seize control of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.

During the 1936-1939 Arab revolt, local Arabs were supposed to be revolting against the British administration, and yet several hundred Jews were killed.

In 1948, when Jordan invaded and illegally occupied the area — while rebranding it as “the West Bank” — Jews were expelled, synagogues destroyed, and cemeteries desecrated. That occupation, recognized by almost no one, lasted until 1967, when Israel liberated the territory in a defensive war. No sovereign Palestinian state ever existed here. To claim that Israel is “occupying” someone else’s land is a lie designed to erase Jewish history.

The harsh truth is this: If Palestinians wanted their own state, they would have one by now. They have turned down every serious offer for peace and statehood — 1936, 1947, 1967, 2000, 2008, and 2014 — because every offer required accepting a Jewish state alongside them. The reality is that Palestinian leadership does not want a state of their own; they want the destruction of Israel.

The infantilization of the Palestinian people by the global community — treating them as perpetual victims incapable of agency — is both absurd and insulting. They are not the only people in the world to face displacement or hardship, yet they are the only people treated as if they need other countries to do their bargaining and bidding for them. The Arab world controls one-sixth of the planet’s wealth, yet somehow Palestinians are uniquely helpless?

The truth is not that they can’t build a state; it’s that they don’t want to — not if it means accepting a Jewish one.

The ignorant critics like to parrot the claim that Palestinians simply want to “return” to the homes they were displaced from during what they call “the Nakba.” This is historically illiterate.

Before Israel’s declaration of independence in 1948, both Jews and Arabs lived in the land, which was under British mandate but not part of the UK. Time and again, international bodies proposed partitioning the land into two states: one Jewish, one Arab. Time and again the Jews said yes, and time and again the Arabs refused, choosing violence and war instead. By rejecting coexistence and launching wars of annihilation, the local Arabs (what we now call the Palestinians) did not just forfeit the opportunity for statehood; they forfeited any claim to a so-called “right of return.”

“But the Palestinians are indigenous to the land!” the dummies shout. This is a lie repeated so often that people mistake it for fact. The truth is that the land we now call Israel was sparsely populated and underdeveloped for centuries. In the 1800s and early 1900s, waves of both Jews and Arabs immigrated to the area, drawn by opportunities that didn’t exist before.

The Jewish pioneers, driven by the Zionist movement, began draining the malarial swamps in the early 20th century, transforming uninhabitable land into fertile ground. As the Jewish community built farms, businesses, and infrastructure, the local economy grew, and Arabs from across the Middle East and North Africa — Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Iraq, even as far as Yemen — migrated in to take advantage of the economic boom.

By the 1920s and 1930s, much of what is now called “Palestinian” ancestry had roots elsewhere in the Arab world, arriving in the land only after Jewish development created jobs and stability. To claim that these relatively recent arrivals were somehow an ancient, unbroken indigenous population is historical fantasy. Jews, by contrast, maintained continuous ties to the land for over 3,000 years, even through exile and diaspora, and returned not as conquerors, but as people reclaiming their ancestral home.

Jordan King Hussein flying over the Temple Mount in Jerusalem when it was under Jordanian control, in 1965 (photo: Wikipedia)

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Under international law, Israel’s claim to Judea and Samaria is not only moral but also legal. The 1922 League of Nations Mandate for Palestine explicitly recognized the Jewish People’s right to reconstitute their homeland throughout the territory, including what is now the West Bank. That mandate was carried over into the UN Charter under Article 80, a provision often called the “Palestine Clause,” which preserved Jewish national rights.

Furthermore, Jordan’s occupation from 1948 to 1967 was illegal and recognized by almost no one. There was no Palestinian sovereign to dispossess. Israel, defending itself in 1967 from another existential war, acquired the territory in a defensive war, giving it stronger legal standing than most territorial claims in modern history.

Israel’s geography is unforgiving. Without the West Bank, the country would have a narrow waist of just nine miles near Tel Aviv, leaving its heartland virtually indefensible. The territory provides critical high ground overlooking Israel’s population centers and key infrastructure. Retaining control of this area is not an act of aggression; it is a matter of survival.

After the horrors of October 7th, no rational nation would gamble with its people’s safety again. Annexation would ensure consistent security control, preventing the region from becoming another launchpad for terror.

The only argument against Israel annexation the West Bank is that there are people living there — Palestinians. But those people are a people that repeatedly calls for terror; celebrates massacres; raises its children to hate; and rejects peace, prosperity, and coexistence. They want Israel gone and Jews dead.

The Palestinians are a people, therefore, that forfeits any legitimate claim to sovereignty or even the privileges of normal nationhood. If they cannot coexist peacefully on the land, then relocation to another Arab country — many of which are awash in wealth and land — is not only reasonable, but humane. It would end the cycle of violence and finally give Palestinians a chance to build a future elsewhere, without holding Israel hostage to their fantasies of destruction.

As Israel’s founding prime minister David Ben-Gurion used to say, for every Israeli soldier killed by the Arabs, a Jewish settlement should be built. I would add a caveat: perhaps two Jewish settlements for every woman or child murdered.

And the international community’s reflexive defense of Palestinian “rights” ignores that rights come with responsibilities.

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Belgium, a country irrelevant on the world stage, declared this week its intention to recognize a Palestinian state. If Belgium can impose its opinion on a conflict that has nothing to do with it, then Israel, a sovereign nation directly affected by decades of terror and war, has every right to make decisions for its own security and future. Sovereignty is not something to be begged for; it is something exercised.

Of course, we know that most foreign governments pontificating about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are not motivated by principle or justice; they are projecting their own domestic dysfunctions onto Israel, as many countries have historically done onto their Jews.

In Belgium, for example, the announcement to recognize a Palestinian state was not about peace or morality. It was about averting a political crisis that had fractured the governing coalition. Belgian leaders exploited the conflict thousands of miles away to paper over their own failures at home. This isn’t solidarity with Palestinians; it’s self-serving theater. And Israel, a sovereign state, should never allow itself to be bound by the hollow posturing of irrelevant governments seeking to distract from their internal chaos.

This is the eternal cause-and-effect dynamic between the world and the Jewish People: Other nations make reckless, performative choices, and Jews adapt, build, and respond — not out of spite, but out of necessity.

To be certain, annexing the West Bank is not about vengeance; it is about sovereignty, security, and justice. Judea and Samaria are the cradle of Jewish history and identity.

Annexation would also create opportunities for integration. Palestinians who renounce terror and accept Jewish sovereignty could be offered residency or even citizenship, opening the door to economic growth and stability that their corrupt leaders have denied them for decades. Israeli governance could bring jobs, infrastructure, and security to communities long exploited by their own elites.

And, it must be stated: Annexation sends a message that Jewish blood is not cheap and Jewish sovereignty is not up for negotiation. It is a recognition that no one will truly defend the Jewish state except the Jewish state itself, and the fulfillment of a historical promise: that the Jewish People will never again depend on the “goodwill” of others for our survival.

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