Milan, 3 September (LaPresse) – Far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has presented a plan to annex most of the West Bank, 82%, and urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to “make a historic decision to apply Israeli sovereignty to all open areas of Judea and Samaria”, the name used by Israel to refer to the West Bank. Israel must take control of ‘the maximum amount of land with the minimum Palestinian population’ because ‘we have no desire to apply our sovereignty over a population that desires our destruction,’ Smotrich said, adding that in recent months, ‘the Defence Ministry's settlement administration has been working on mapping sovereignty according to this general principle, and God willing, Israeli sovereignty will be applied to about 82% of the territory.’ In a joint statement with Israel Ganz, head of the Yesha Council, the body that brings together West Bank settlements, Smotrich said that the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) will be gradually eliminated in favour of what he calls ‘regional civil management alternatives’.
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