The Knesset recently considered a bill that would declare the Jewish state’s sovereignty over the West Bank. While the idea is gaining traction on the Israeli right, Efraim Inbar argues that it is a bad one, and a distraction from more pressing matters:

The Jewish state’s enforcement agencies have difficulty trying to enforce the country’s decisions within Israel’s sovereign territory. Only some of the government’s decisions are actually carried out. Tens of thousands of demolition orders of illegally built homes [by Palestinians] remain written on paper without being implemented. There are even some areas in the country where police officers hesitate to exercise their authority. In other words, Israel suffers from a governance problem that stems from the political system’s lack of resolve. The politicians try to avoid confrontations that carry political repercussions, and there are not enough policemen or inspectors for effective law enforcement. This phenomenon is the result not of a lack of sovereignty but of governance shortcomings.

Therefore, without effective governance, there is no point in deciding to expand the domain of Israeli sovereignty. Even today, the Israeli government has the necessary legal authority to prevent illegal home construction in Area C, [the part of the West Bank that, pursuant to the Oslo Accords, is under direct Israeli control]. . . . Yet Israel refrains from demolishing many illegal buildings in Area C. . . .

Declaring sovereignty over Judea and Samaria also exceeds the limits of the Israeli consensus. Applying Israeli law in Judea and Samaria does not command the support of the majority of Israelis, . . . [unlike] the consensus on applying Israeli law to the Old City in Jerusalem and to the Golan Heights.

Two extraordinary events demonstrate something important about Israel’s most fervent adversaries. One was a speech given at something called The People’s Forum (funded generously by Goldman Sachs), which stated, “When the state of Israel is finally destroyed and erased from history, that will be the single most important blow we can give to destroying capitalism and imperialism.”

The suggestion that this tiny state is the linchpin of a global, centuries-old phenomenon like capitalism goes well beyond anything resembling rational criticism. Even if Israel were guilty of genocide, apartheid, and oppression—which of course it is not—it would not follow that its destruction would help end capitalism or imperialism.

The other was an anti-Israel protest that took place in front of New York City’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, deemed “complicit” in Israel’s evils. At organizers’ urging, participants shouted their slogans at kids in the cancer ward, who were watching from the windows. Given Hamas’s indifference toward the lives of Gazan children, such callousness toward non-Palestinian children from Hamas’s Western allies shouldn’t be surprising. The protest—like the abovementioned speech—deliberately conveyed the message that Israel is the ultimate evil and its destruction the ultimate good, cancer patients be damned.

The fact that Israel’s adversaries are almost comically perverse does not mean that they can be dismissed. If its allies fail to understand the obsessive and irrational hatred that it faces, they cannot effectively help it defend itself.