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Netanyahu's map erasing occupied West Bank sparks widespread condemnation

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appeared in front of a controversial map of Israel that omits the occupied West Bank
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stands before a Gaza Strip map with writing in Hebrew that reads: 'Philadelphi corridor under Israeli military control' while excluding the occupied West Bank, during a news conference in Jerusalem on 2 September 2024 (Ohad Zwigenberg/Pool via Reuters)
By Firdevs Bulut
Published date: 3 September 2024 19:59 BST | Last update: 2 months ago

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has faced wide condemnation after showing a map that excluded the occupied West Bank in a news briefing on Monday. 

The Israeli prime minister appeared standing in front of a wall-sized digital map where the occupied West Bank had been erased.

The Palestinian foreign ministry said the use of the map was “a blatant acknowledgement of Israel's colonial and racist agenda. The Ministry views this as a serious violation of international law, especially as Israel continues its war crimes against Palestinians aiming to deny their existence and their legitimate national rights.”

In July 2024, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued an advisory opinion saying Israel's decades-long occupation of the Palestinian territories was "unlawful" and that its "near-complete separation" of people in the occupied West Bank breached international laws concerning "racial segregation" and "apartheid".

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It is illegal under international law to take or build settlements in occupied territories. 

Palestinian ambassador to the UK Husam Zomlot said that Benjamin Netanyahu’s erasure of the occupied West Bank from the map aims to erase the Palestinian people and take the rest of their land. He pointed out the irony of the situation, asking what would happen if a Palestinian politician did this. 

“The erasure of the West Bank is part of the same genocidal campaign as Gaza, a total assault on Palestinian existence made possible with US support,” Assal Rad, a historian of Middle East history, posted on the social media platform X.

Feminist grassroots organisation Code Pink also took to X, saying that “Israel plans to destroy all of Palestine and force Palestinians into Gaza, a shrinking concentration camp. This is an incitement of genocide. Where is the international alarm?”

Mairav Zonszein, a senior Israel analyst with the International Crisis Group, said that “this speech will go down in history as Netanyahu's open admission to that world that Israel will remain between the river and the sea indefinitely, as long as he rules”.

Algeria’s national football team, Algeria FC, also joined the conversation, saying that “in case the genocide in Gaza wasn’t clear enough and you needed further proof of Israel’s plan to fully erase Palestine”.

Journalist Rania Abouzeid said it was not the first time Netanyahu presented a map that "erases Palestinians". 

Pro-Palestinian activists and protesters have been regularly criticised for their use of the slogan "from the river to the sea", with critics going so far as to say the phrase is antisemitic. Journalist and filmmaker Robert Mackey pointed out that the incident was a physical manifestation of the phrase.

“Benjamin Netanyahu is broadcasting his plans of ethnic cleansing and wanton destruction of Palestinian lives from the river to the sea clear… Yet the US, UK and EU will babble nonsense about pushing Israel towards a two-state solution while supplying him with the weapons to make his genocidal colonial plans a reality,” TV host and journalist Afshin Rattansi said on X. 

Social media analyst, author and professor Marc Owen Jones said the threat of Palestinian erasure has accelerated since the Abraham Accords.

At the United Nations General Assembly last September, Netanyahu presented a map showing a “new Middle East” where the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip appeared to be part of Israel.

An earlier erroneous map shown by Netanyahu also included the Palestinian territories as part of Israel in 1948.

Israel did not control the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem or the Gaza Strip, following its creation in 1948 on 80 percent of historic Palestine. It illegally occupied the territories in 1967 and continues to do so, in what is known as the longest occupation in modern history.

The inclusion of Palestinian lands, and at times land belonging to Syria and Lebanon, in Israeli maps is common among believers of the concept of Eretz Yisrael - Greater Israel - a key part of ultra-nationalist Zionism that claims all of these lands belong to a Zionist state.

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