Israeli Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu urged his government to immediately annex the West Bank to Palestine. According to him, the Green Line separating Israel from the occupied Palestinian territories is fictitious.
“I don't really think there is a Green Line. It's a fictitious line. This is our homeland. This is where the Jews appear. The attitude of the state of Israel that there are two states here is a mistake. We have to impose sovereignty over Judea and Samaria (the biblical term for the West Bank)," Eliyahu told Army Radio, as reported by CNN Indonesia.
With that in mind, Eliyahu assessed that Israel must immediately take steps as soon as possible, so that the colonial country can gain international recognition. “We have to move this forward as quickly as possible, as intelligently as possible. We have to say this everywhere to create international recognition that this place is ours," he said.
“In Judea and Samaria, everyone understands that our roots and history are there, and therefore I think the whole Green Line is just an anomaly. There is a distorted reality that we need to erase," he said.
The Green Line is the de facto border between Israel and its neighbors agreed under the 1949 Armistice Agreement, which ended Israel's War of Independence. However, in the Six Day War in 1967, Israel abandoned its borders by seizing the Golan Heights, East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Israel later annexed the Golan Heights and East Jerusalem in a bid that was never recognized by the international community. Over time, Israel unilaterally withdrew from the Gaza Strip.
Israel has long been desperate to annex the West Bank. In June, the country even approved a plan to build thousands of new homes in the annexed area.
In fact, the global community and the Palestinians consider the construction of settlements to be illegal and hinder peace efforts. Until now, more than 700 thousand Israelis live in the West Bank and in East Jerusalem.
