Israel backs off talk of annexing West Bank after UAE warning
The Emiratis, who signed a peace deal with Israel in 2020, have warned publicly and privately that annexing the Palestinian territory would cross a red line.
September 6, 2025 at 5:00 a.m. EDTToday at 5:00 a.m. EDT
By Gerry Shih and Lior Soroka
washingtonpost.com
TEL AVIV — For weeks, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been weighing formally annexing much or all of the occupied West Bank.
An annexation, widely viewed as a violation of international law, would inflame public opinion across the Arab world and threaten President Donald Trump’s first-term effort to broker peace between Israel and several of its neighbors. But it would give Netanyahu a boost with Israeli voters.
Now, an unusual message, delivered by a crucial Arab partner, is complicating his decision-making.
On Tuesday, a top Emirati official told Israeli and international media outlets that annexation would be a “red line” for the United Arab Emirates and would “foreclose on the idea of regional integration.” The Emiratis followed the rare, coordinated interviews by special envoy Lana Nusseibeh with a flurry of back-channel warnings, according to three people with knowledge of the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss it.
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By Thursday, the people said, the issue of annexation was removed from the official agenda of a high-level consultation among Netanyahu and several senior ministers hours before it began.
An Israeli official acknowledged that the warning from the Emirates, one of the Arab countries most supportive of integrating Israel and its economy into the Middle East, caught Netanyahu’s government off guard.
“The Emirates have expressed concerns about [annexation] before through other channels, but the statement came as a surprise,” the Israeli official said. “It’s very unusual.”
Seif Abu Kandeilin, a displaced Palestinian, looks at the destruction in the Jenin refugee camp in the northern West Bank in March, the scene of heavy fighting in what Israeli officials described as a counterterrorism operation. (Heidi Levine/For The Washington Post)
It’s not clear whether the warnings will dissuade Netanyahu against annexation, but it highlights a dilemma. The prime minister is being urged by domestic allies, including coalition partners who are propping up his government, to act immediately to annex the territory, given the growing number of Western countries, including Britain, Canada and France, that have pledged to soon recognize a Palestinian state.
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Analysts say an Israeli move to annex the West Bank would violate international law; threaten the Abraham Accords, the agreement Netanyahu signed in 2020 with the UAE and other countries to establish diplomatic relations; and undermine Israel’s prospects of normalizing ties with economic giant Saudi Arabia.
It could also damage Netanyahu’s relationship with Trump, who has celebrated the accords as a signature foreign policy achievement and hopes to usher a similar, legacy-defining deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia.
Emirati officials went public this week after growing frustrated that Netanyahu was not heeding their private entreaties and that U.S. officials including Mike Huckabee, the ambassador to Israel, seemed to be following Netanyahu’s lead instead of clearly stating a U.S. position, two of the three people said.
The Emiratis signed the Abraham Accords precisely to stave off a Netanyahu threat to annex the West Bank. Emirati officials now believe the United States and Israel are taking their concerns more seriously.
A White House spokesperson, asked to comment, referred to remarks Thursday by Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
“What you’re seeing with the West Bank and the annexation, that’s not a final thing — that’s something being discussed among some elements of Israeli politics,” Rubio told reporters in Ecuador. “I’m not going to opine on that today.”
Instead, Rubio blamed London and Paris for provoking Israel into taking the step by moving to recognize a Palestinian state.
“What I am going to tell you is it was wholly predictable,” he said.
U.S. policy since 1993 has been to support the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank, home to roughly 3 million Palestinians. But in the two terms under Trump, U.S. officials have often sounded far more amenable to the Israeli position.
Huckabee told The Washington Post last month that annexation by Israel would be “their decision.” Israel — which has occupied the West Bank since 1967 — feels it needs to formally annex parts of the territory to bolster security on its eastern flank and avoid a repeat of the deadly Hamas-led attacks of Oct. 7, 2023, Huckabee said. That’s a line often argued by Netanyahu.
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“October 7 changed everything,” Huckabee said. “There’s a security concern that what happened to the west could happen to the east.”
Hamas and other fighters streamed out of Gaza on Oct. 7, killed 1,200 people in Israel, Israeli authorities say, and took 251 more back to the enclave as hostages. Israel responded with a full-scale war to eliminate Hamas in Gaza.
The Israel Defense Forces have killed more than 64,000 people in the enclave since then, the health ministry there says. The majority of them are believed to be civilians. The ministry does not distinguish between civilians and fighters.
Some Israeli officials are pressing ahead despite the Emirati warning. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich on Wednesday unveiled a plan to annex 82 percent of the West Bank. “The time has come,” he told reporters, “to remove once and for all from the agenda the idea of dividing our tiny land and establishing a terror state in its center.”
Smotrich has overseen an aggressive expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, territory Palestinians hope will make up the bulk of a future independent state. The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs warned in June that settler violence had reached a 20-year high.
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National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, another far-right leader, raised annexation at the meeting with Netanyahu Thursday after it had been taken off the agenda.
Ben Gvir called for dismantling the Palestinian Authority, which governs parts of the West Bank, and forcing the collapse of the economy even if that meant giving up any hope of establishing diplomatic ties with Saudi Arabia, a person with knowledge of the meeting said.
Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand in June announced sanctions on Smotrich and Ben Gvir for, they said, having “incited extremist violence and serious abuses of Palestinian human rights.”
Dan Diker, the president of the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs, a think tank close to the Israeli government, predicted Netanyahu would annex at least the Jordan Valley and the hills on its western face — a step Diker described as “a critical, nonnegotiable security need.”
“It’s about how they present it and expressing a sensitivity to the Emirati position while saying at the same time, ‘Israel has got to be able to defend itself,’” Diker said. “Israel needs to explain to our Emirati friends that any sovereign Palestinian Authority would become another platform for jihadism and mass murder.”
The decision to annex rests with Netanyahu, analysts say. The Knesset in July approved a symbolic call for sovereignty over Judea and Samaria, the biblical names by which the government refers to the West Bank, and the Jordan Valley. If Netanyahu proposed such a move, analysts say, his cabinet would rubber-stamp it.
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The Emirati political scientist Abdulkhaleq Abdulla said many in the Gulf country were already questioning the wisdom of normalizing ties with Israel.
“It’s a very clear message not just to Israel, but to the Americans: It’s either the Abraham Accords or annexation of the West Bank, it’s your choice,” said Abdulla, a fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School. “The sentiment in the UAE is: Don’t take us for granted. We value peace and stability, but we won’t go along with this kind of imperial Israel that Netanyahu and company are showing. It’s just not the kind of Israel that we want to be associated with.”
Emirati leaders have been criticized for their closeness with Israel during the war in Gaza. For Abu Dhabi, relations with Israel, Abdulla said, are “turning into a burden, reputation-wise.”
“How long are we going to sustain this genocidal war and being next to Israel, with everybody accusing the UAE as a participant? It’s really damaging,” he said.
Many in Israel’s security establishment are also cautioning against moves that would further damage Israel’s ties with the Arab world and, in particular, antagonize Emirati President Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, who expended political capital to make peace.
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“The Abraham Accords, along with peace with Jordan and Egypt, is the most important pillar in our national strategy,” said former Israeli defense ministry policy chief Zohar Palti, who helped craft the 2020 pact.
“Given what MBZ did with his courageous decision in 2020 to sign the Abraham Accords, we should listen to the Emiratis,” he said. “It’s essential to do everything to make peace with the Arab countries.”
Michael Birnbaum in Washington contributed to this report. |
