Netanyahu determined to annex Jordan Valley, refuting earlier report

An Israeli news site said that an inter-ministerial committee will convene to examine plans to extend sovereignty over the Jordan Valley, in contradiction to an earlier report.

By World Israel News Staff

Arutz-7 reports on Tuesday afternoon that the inter-ministerial Committee to Promote Sovereignty in the Jordan Valley will meet in a week and a half at the Prime Minister’s Office.

The report contradicts an earlier one Tuesday by Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has frozen plans to annex the Jordan Valley.

“Netanyahu has made it clear that he will promote with full force the plan for applying sovereignty in the Valley and the northern Dead Sea and will continue to do so,” the Prime Minister’s Office said, according to Arutz-7.

Yediot had reported earlier in the day that the inter-ministerial meeting had been canceled last week in order not to increase friction with the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

It was motivated by “the assessment that the chief prosecutor of The Hague was about to publish her preliminary examination results. The concern was that the convening of the [inter-ministerial] team at that time would intensify the confrontation with the ICC,” he paper reported.

But Arutz 7 reports the prime minister intends to keep his promise to annex the Jordan Valley and northern Dead Sea areas.

In September, a week before the second Israeli elections in a year, Netanyahu vowed to annex the Jordan Valley and northern Dead Sea area. “It’s our eastern defensive wall. A defensive wall that ensures that we’ll never return to be a state with a width of several kilometers,” he said.

Arutz 7 reports that Netanyahu visited the community of Mitzpe Yericho in the Binyamin region of Judea and Samaria last week.

“The enthusiasm here and the pioneering spirit just shakes the soul. The huge development of Mitzpeh Yericho and all the settlements in Binyamin is incredible and we’ll continue it. The reason we are here is that we have pooled forces to overcome those who wanted to push us out of our country and bring us back to the 1967 line,” Netanyahu said.

He said he was “excited to see the ancient landscape of the Land of Israel, the Land of the Bible, the Land of our ancestors.”