Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made an announcement that it is now official U.S. policy that Israeli settlements in the West Bank are no longer illegal and that Israel is free to build wherever it wants in the West Bank. Pompeo said this does not mean that Israel owns the West Bank and this new policy does not preclude a peace settlement.
As you can imagine this policy change was greeted very positively by Israel and with profound dismay by the Palestinians. This policy change upends decades of U.S policy toward settlements and defies the policy of almost all of the rest of the developed world. Meanwhile Israeli settlement leaders are passing out maps of intended new and expanded settlements which will complete the process of hemming in every Palestinian town in the West Bank by ringing each such town with settlements.
Expanding the settlement to the degree that this U.S. green light allows will absolutely destroy the Palestinian economy. This means that a Palestinian born in a Palestinian town will probably never be able to venture more than a mile from that town in their life time as Israel restricts any Palestinian movement without a travel pass which is almost impossible to get. Without the ability to move goods and services, the Palestinian economy is limited to just the local customers.
The incomplete Israeli elections will just give rise to the settler leaders thinking that anything goes since no one is in charge. Netanyahu and the Likud party were given the right to try first to put together a coalition government in the Knesset. Likud got 32 seats and they can add the religious and right wing parties which only gets him to 55 seats when he needs 61 to form a majority. Then Benny Gantz of the Blue and White party started with 33 seats and has given it a try but cannot get more than 50 seats for a coalition, or 58 if he adds Lieberman’s secular Yisrael Beiteinu party. There has been discussions of Likud and Blue and White parties getting together to form a super majority party. However that has been derailed because Netanyahu insists on being Prime Minister in this combination rather than Gantz and Gantz is not happy about co-existing with the religious parties in such a coalition. Neither side is talking to the Arab party, the Joint List, and their 13 seats which could bring either Likud or Blue and White into a majority position. In fact Netanyahu just gave a speech in which he called the Joint List a 5th column that hates Israel. So it looks like Israel will have to hold another election and in my opinion that will not let any party form a majority. Like the U.S. the parties and their supporters are unwilling to budge an inch.
So while Israel is a tiny country with a tiny population, to paraphrase an expression “ what happens in Israel does not stay in Israel”. The volatile Mideast will stay that way both with Pompeo’s announcement as well as Israel’s leadership vacuum