Netanyahu Pledges to Annex Part of West Bank

“A week before an election in which he is battling for survival, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel on Tuesday asked voters to return him to power with a mandate to annex the Jordan Valley in the occupied West Bank, a move that could dramatically reshape the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” the New York Times reports.

“The move would give the nation ‘secure, permanent borders’ for the first time in its history, he said, but it would also reduce any future Palestinian state to an enclave encircled by Israel.”