Israel, as a Vassal State of the European Union

"Annexation of Palestinian territories, whatever the perimeters, would seriously throw into question the parameters to resolve the conflict." 
"An annexation decision could not be left without consequences, and we are examining different options at a national level and also in co-ordination with our main European partners."
Jean-Yves Le Drian, French Foreign Minister

"As a life-long friend, admirer and supporter of Israel, I am fearful that these proposals will fail in their objective of securing Israel's borders and will be contrary to Israel's own long-term interests." "[Annexation] would put in jeopardy [the gains Israel has made in recent years in improving relations with the Arab world]."
"I profoundly hope that annexation does not go ahead. If it does, the UK will not recognize any changes to the 1967 lines, except those agreed between both parties."
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson

The Israeli settlement of Maale Adumim, the largest in the occupied West Bank, is seen with a view the Jerusalem skyline in the background. (Menahem Kahana/AFP/Getty Images)

"The Trump administration and Netanyahu are no longer in perfect sync. … Kushner has always seen this as a peace plan, and it’s become clear that Bibi sees it more like an annexation plan."
"The administration is invested in other equities it would like to balance. It would like to keep Gulf Arabs happy. And it understands that there’s fierce criticism of this [annexation] plan, not just in the Arab world but in Europe and in the U.S."
"You can’t have diplomats in Washington saying this about a more, you know, realistic Palestinian state and then have people in Israel saying [there will] never be a Palestinian state."
"Both cannot be true."
David Makovsky, fellow, Washington Institute for Near East Policy

"[The administration] wants to show that this is being done responsibly. They want to minimize the blowback from various parties. That gave a veto back to Gantz, which he didn’t get in the coalition agreement itself." 
"At the moment, there is not a compatibility among all the parties."
Dan Shapiro, former U.S. ambassador to Israel, fellow, Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), Tel Aviv University

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says settlements - on land claimed by Palestinians - will become part of Israel  AFP

The international community is never tardy in giving their studied opinions on when, why and how Israel must proceed to satisfy their judgement in dealing with the Palestinians in the never-ending search for a peace settlement that would launch the formal recognition of a nascent Palestinian state to be established alongside that of the Jewish state. The beginning and end of the continued refusals on the part of the Palestinian Authority to accept all reasonable offers proffered by Israeli negotiators is its denial of Israel's existence as a Jewish state.

A state re-established in the ancient Judean homeland of Jews. Jews finally making good on the prayer "Next year in Jerusalem", a fervent wish and determined aspiration of the diaspora, to return to the place of Judean indigenous heritage. The interminable exile with its wide dispersion and its never-ending oppression, discrimination, threats, hate campaigns and pogroms, culminating in the European Holocaust led by Nazi Germany of Europe's Jews slated for an organized mass extermination through a general consensus of anti-Semitism, leavened with contempt and supporating hatred.

Israel however, is a reality, the return of far-flung diaspora Jews to the land of Zion, recapturing the landscape, memory and promise of the past. The Palestinians returned. Only to discover that squatters had lifted the nomenclature that identified them as Jewish Palestinians living in their ancient geography, swapping it for Arab Palestinians claiming the land to be their ancient geography, dismissive of archaeological proof, of Biblical proof, of vibrant affirmative narratives of ancient coevals validating Jewish presence on the land.

Though Europe was complicit with Nazi Germany's Final Solution, Europe now feels entitled to dictate to what is left of world Jewry -- which after almost a century has been unable to replace the numbers that were annihilated -- how they must proceed lest they 'disappoint' the expectations of the world community. Continually placating the rage of Palestinian Arabs in the pretense that a peace agreement is reachable despite that one after another has been presented, ceding most Arab demands only to start all over again with contemptful dismissal of the offers by the PA.

Which, discreetly removed from non-Arab attention, incites Palestinians to demand no less than the entire narrow land mass upon which Israel sits, to be 'restored' to Palestinian rule. There never was Palestinian rule. The Arab League, which might have conferred upon the Palestinians their version of statehood, never felt the urge to deliver statehood and sovereignty to Palestinians. But Israel must defer and do just that, according to UNRWA and the EU, welcoming the 7 million descendants of the original 700,000 Arabs who fled temporarily with the intention to return in triumph after the assembled Arab armies destroyed  Israel -- only the intention failed.

This is a Jewish state, moreover, that unlike a proposed Palestinian state that made it clear it had no intention of permitting the presence of any Jews among them, accepts almost two million Arabs as citizens of Israel, where democratic elections place Arab Palestinians as lawmakers in the Israeli Knesset, despite their sympathies with Fatah and Hamas, two terrorist groups whose mandate is the destruction of Israel.

Mind, the Arab villages located within Israel, given the opportunity would balk at being ceded as territory to be ruled by the Palestinian Authority, in exchange for a similar amount of land carved out of [Judea and Samaria] the 'West Bank' occupied by Jewish settlements being transferred to Israeli sovereign rule. A reasonable compromise slammed by the Palestinian Authority which is devoted to the rousing war cry of "Palestine, from the river to the sea", obliterating the presence of Israel altogether.

What seemed a reasonable goal to achieve that would complement the existence of both Israel and 'Palestine' in a much-vaunted idealistic 'two-state-solution' that Europe still focuses on despite continual PA denials of reasonable solutions under the impression that the Palestinians are entitled to all their demands, while the Israelis must capitulate to all those of the Palestinians prepared to sacrifice nothing in the interests of establishing peace, is no longer feasible, in the wake of never-ending refusals to bargain for peace and hence a legitimized Palestinian state.

For the demand of the PA that all UNRAWA-recognized Palestinian 'refugees' must be welcomed into Israel, while the world fails to recognize, and sees no reason why it should, a like number of Jews exiled from Arab countries in 1948, their heritage and properties confiscated, where in a fair arena of justice also should be recognized as refugees and reparations offered them in compensation for loss of possessions and their past status as Jewish Arabs, by an Israel-hostile Arab world, we have the ultimate double standard.

Palestinian artists draw murals depicting the Dome of the Rock and the West Bank as part of an awareness campaign against Israel's West Bank annexation plans, in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on July 1. SAID KHATIB/AFP via Getty Images