3/9/2024–|Last update: 3/9/202403:17 PM (Makkah Time)
“Where is the West Bank on this map?” This question was asked by the Palestinian Ambassador to Britain, Husam Zomlot, after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu finished explaining the situation on the Philadelphi (Salah al-Din) border axis between the Gaza Strip and Egypt, yesterday, Monday, in the map of Palestine that he was displaying, which did not show the West Bank and showed only the Gaza Strip.
“The Israeli Prime Minister makes it clear that Israel’s goal is to wipe out the Palestinian people and seize what remains of our land! Imagine if a Palestinian politician did this,” Zomlot said in a post on his social media account.
Minutes after Netanyahu’s conference, the absence of the West Bank from his map caught the attention of virtual world users. Politicians and activists said that the map Netanyahu presented, which excluded the West Bank, was a clear indication of a project to displace the Palestinians and liquidate their cause.
The Palestinian people now have only two options: either to rise up and demand their legitimate rights and their right of return in every country of asylum, or to surrender to the situation and forget about something called Palestine.
For his part, writer Yasser Al-Zatara commented on Netanyahu’s map, saying: “The truth is that there is nothing new in this matter at all. Netanyahu and the overwhelming majority of the enemy’s leaders see it as ‘Judea and Samaria’, and an integral part of the ‘Land of Israel’. Therefore, the name of the ‘Oslo Agreement’ was ‘Gaza Jericho First’, considering that the Strip is not part of ‘Judea and Samaria’, while Jericho is a ‘cursed city’ in the biblical faith.”
While others sent a message to those they described as advocates of maintaining calm in the West Bank, and stopping resisting the occupation and confronting its forces in order not to give it a justification to destroy it as it did in Gaza, saying: “Here is Netanyahu’s answer… a map in which the West Bank has completely disappeared.”
Bloggers pointed out that this is not the first time Netanyahu has used this map. In September 2023, Netanyahu displayed a map of Israel devoid of the West Bank and Jerusalem, a map that sparked widespread controversy and speculation about his government’s intentions at the time.
Just two weeks after Netanyahu presented the controversial map, the Al-Aqsa Intifada came, a response to old plans that ignored Palestinian rights, bloggers said.
Analysts added that after Netanyahu presented a map of Israel yesterday that included the entire West Bank, “contrary to Oslo, the two-state solution, the deal of the century and all sorts of nonsense,” the Israeli army is expanding its war on the West Bank today, invading Tulkarm and Nablus, in addition to Jenin, Hebron and the Ramallah area. The Palestinian Authority is holding a sit-in in Ramallah and issuing a statement of condemnation.
After the uproar caused by Netanyahu’s map, the Palestinian Foreign Ministry commented on it – in a statement on its Facebook page – saying: “Netanyahu’s map reveals the truth about the agendas of the far-right, racist, colonial government, and calls for urgent international action to protect the two-state solution.”
