Plans for Israeli Jordan Valley annexation moving forward

A committee to prepare for the Israeli application of sovereignty to the Jordan Valley and the Megilot Region of the Dead Sea is scheduled to meet on Sunday, officials confirmed to The Jerusalem Post.

The inter-departmental committee headed by the Prime Minister’s Office Director-General Ronen Peretz will include representation from the Foreign Ministry, the National Security Council, the Civil Administration and the IDF.

Israeli law prohibits an interim government, such as the one headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, from applying Israeli sovereignty to the Jordan Valley or any part of the West Bank.

Already during the last election cycle Netanyahu promised to apply sovereignty to the Jordan Valley immediately upon formation of a new government. In the last few weeks, as he successfully battled his Likud rival, Gideon Sa’ar, for continued leadership of the Likud party, Netanyahu pledged numerous times to annex all of the West Bank settlements. He added he would do so with the support of US President Donald Trump’s administration.

It was a statement he continued to issue even after the International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda issued a statement earlier this month that she believed Israeli settlement activity constituted a war crime.

Bensouda said she intends to open an investigation into the matter. In advance of such a probe she asked the ICC’s pre-trial chamber to issue a ruling on the court’s jurisdiction in the matter.