Ben Rhodes

And for the first time since 1967, Israel will begin to designate large portions of Area C as state land.

And the goal is 15% of Area C in the next few years, unless the current Palestinian owners can prove their ownership.

And as the Israeli organization Peace Now notes, that process requires landowners to prove ownership in ways that are really almost impossible for Palestinians to do so.

Look, Eamon, what do you make of these steps and what's been going on in the West Bank recently, something that doesn't get as much attention as it should?

Yeah, I mean, you're describing the dynamic exactly.

And again, it connects to the Ukraine and Greenland point.

I mean, now is the era of no rules, and now is the era of annexation.

Now is the time to grab while the grabbing is good, you know?

Exactly.

And, you know, you mentioned some of these responses.

I mean, Trump says, I'm against annexation.

We have enough things to think about now.

I mean, that's not exactly coming down hard.

That's not like, you know, conditioning assistance to Israel or using real leverage, right?

Do you not know as the President of the United States that he has to have many portfolios?

Yeah, including one where you presumably have a lot of leverage on Israel.

The UN Secretary General condemned the decision, but...

i mean the the israelis just flattened the un facility in east jerusalem for unruh literally people should look at this online it's completely destroyed the un headquarters there that tells you how much sway the un has there the arab states released a statement um you know saying israel's accelerating attempts at illegal annexation and the displacement the palestinian people but okay that's another set of words so

It does feel like there's not really any pushback to these.

The Israelis are pushing and testing.