4 ministers in Netanyahu’s government call for annexing occupied West Bank

Four ministers in the Israeli far-right government of Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday called for the annexation of the occupied West Bank.

According to the Israeli public broadcaster KAN, the ministers made the calls during an opening ceremony of a neighborhood in the illegal "Har Brakha" settlement near Nablus city in the northern West Bank.

The ministers who made the calls were Defense Minister Israel Katz, Settlements and National Missions Minister Orit Strock, Justice Minister Yariv Levin and Negev, Galilee and National Resilience Minister Yitzhak Wasserlauf.

According to KAN, the ministers along with other settler leaders called for imposing the Israeli sovereignty and expand settlement construction across the West Bank.

Katz considered the settlement as the defense front line of Israel, vowing that Israeli army's military offensive in the West Bank will continue, the broadcaster said.

The international community, including the UN, considers the Israeli settlements to be illegal under international law. The UN has repeatedly warned that continued settlement expansion threatens the viability of a two-state solution, a framework seen as key to resolving the decades-long Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Tension remains high across the occupied West Bank, where at least 954 Palestinians have been killed and over 7,000 injured since the Gaza war began in October 2023, Palestinian data show.

In July 2024, the International Court of Justice declared Israel's decades-long occupation of Palestinian land illegal and demanded the evacuation of all existing settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.