“This is a war crime”: Netanyahu’s annexation plan dashes hope of a Palestinian state

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Tuesday that he plans to annex nearly a third of the occupied West Bank’s territory, known as the Jordan Valley, should he win next week’s snap election. A de facto annexation has long been in place in the Jordan Valley, according to legal scholar and human rights attorney Noura Erakat, and Netanyahu’s annexation plan would crush hopes of an eventual Palestinian state. “As a matter of fact,” she says, “Palestinians cannot live there, they can’t go there, they can’t produce. They cannot have livelihood.” Erakat says this latest announcement from Netanyahu reinforces the apartheid system Palestinians are living under and widely used rhetoric that undermines Palestinian rights. “Instead of discussing this as apartheid and racial discrimination, we have discussed this as a question of sovereignty and a question of negotiations in two states, where the objective facts on the ground lead that there has not been a Palestinian state, that there will not be a