According to paragraph 29 of the agreement cementing Israel’s governing coalition, prime minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu can introduce a bill in the Knesset after June 30 that would apply Israeli sovereignty to certain portions of Judea and Samaria not currently under the Palestinian Authority’s control. Stephen Daisley writes:

[A] sovereignty bill, if it passes into law, will simply begin the process of implementing the Trump administration’s peace plan. . . . The United States intends to recognize this Israeli sovereignty provided Jerusalem agrees to map out a Palestinian state with its opposite numbers in Ramallah.

Come July 1, Britain will view Israel’s application of its laws to its communities in Judea and Samaria as no different from Russia’s invasions and annexation of the Crimea. That is an unsustainable situation, not least when it involves a friendly nation that furnishes us with vital intelligence on national security threats.

In preparation for likely changes to Israel’s map, the UK should recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, commit to moving its embassy there once the COVID-19 pandemic has subsided, and affirm, as the U.S. has, that civilian settlements are not “per-se inconsistent with international law.”

The sovereignty bill Netanyahu is likely to bring forward will leave the Palestinians with the vast majority of Judea and Samaria. Along with Gaza, this gives them substantial territory on which to found their state. Any country that considers itself a friend to the Palestinians should beg them to take the deal and end the conflict. Britain should right a historical wrong by affirming a promise it made a century ago and never again should it treat an ally like an “illegal occupier” in its own land.

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.