Truth Be Told, Israel’s Sovereignty Claims Over The Jordan Valley Are Legitimate - by Erielle Davidson

...The Palestinians are the only group to say no to an independent nation. There are real consequences to rejectionism, including the current government system under which the various Areas are operating. It is an imperfect situation being reported on by an equally imperfect media. As the Western media has done so unabashedly in the past, the Jordan Valley dispute will serve as yet another arena for many to showcase their misconceptions and misinformation about the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Erielle Davidson..
thefederalist.com..
11 September '19..

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s announcement on Tuesday regarding his plan to formalize Israeli sovereignty in Jordan Valley has sent shockwaves across the world. However, much of the outrage has stemmed from a misunderstanding about Israel’s presence in Judea and Samaria and historical claims over the region. Even the standard newspaper accounts of Netanyahu’s plans as envisioning the “annexation” of territory is inaccurate.

Netanyahu never said “annexation.” Instead, he spoke of “applying sovereignty” to refer to Israel’s territorial claims over the Jordan Valley. International outlets, particularly left-leaning ones, have referred to Netanyahu’s campaign promise as a promise to annex land. But there is a reason for the PM’s careful choice of wording, and for its mistranslation and misrepresentation abroad.

A nation cannot annex land over which it already has sovereign claims. Netanyahu purposefully referred to the process as an application of Israeli sovereignty, abstaining from using the Hebrew word for annexation, sipuach. As Eugene Kontorovich, director of the International Law Department at the Jerusalem-based Kohelet Policy Forum, noted, Netanyahu’s proclamation is about “translating long-standing Israeli consensus into action.”

Foreign media is doing its best to portray the potential application of sovereignty in this scenario as far-flung or illegitimate. This interpretation is incorrect. Indeed, after Netanyahu’s announcement, the center-left Blue and White Party, which leads the opposition, sarcastically commented that they were pleased to see Netanyahu “adopting Blue and White’s plan for recognizing the Jordan Valley.”

Blue and White famously accused Netenyahu in 2014 of planning to give up Israeli control over the Jordan Valley. Thus, Israeli application of sovereignty over the Jordan Valley is not some outlandish or novel notion. In fact, Israeli control over the Jordan Valley was central to peace plans drawn up in the 1970s. For those with any familiarity of Israeli politics, Netanyahu’s announcement is unsurprising.

A nation cannot annex that land over which it already has sovereign claims.

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Erielle Davidson is a Staff Writer at the Federalist and a law student at Georgetown University Law Center. She previously was an economic research assistant at the Hoover Institution and a Publius Fellow at the Claremont Institute. She graduated from Middlebury College with a B.A in Russian, with a focus on Eastern European security issues. Find her on Twitter at @politicalelle.