Yesterday marked the twenty-year anniversary of the IDF’s abandonment of its security zone in southern Lebanon, which it had held onto following the First Lebanon War of 1982. To Gershon Hacohen and Efraim Karsh, the withdrawal was a fateful mistake, effectively handing a victory to Hizballah, the Iran-backed terrorist group that had waged an eighteen-year guerrilla war on the IDF and its Lebanese allies:

To its opponents, the change in the legal status of certain areas of Judea and Samaria is “annexation;” to its proponents, it is the “extension of sovereignty” or the “application of Israeli law.” Naomi Khan argues that the last term best captures the practical implications of the measures in question. Since the Six-Day War, the Jewish state has continued to uphold the Ottoman legal system in areas of the West Bank under its jurisdiction—despite the fact that the Ottoman empire ceased to exist in 1922; “annexation” would end this situation. Setting aside the usual questions of foreign policy, security, and the possibility of Palestinian statehood, Khan argues that this change would be the one most felt by those who live there: