Israel to annex large parts of West Bank.. shock!

Hardly shock news now, is it? According to the Scotsman (and most other English language media) Israel is now using the election of Hamas to annex the largest of its settlement blocks in the West Bank which is what it was doing before Hamas was elected anyway.

The leadership of both sides now openly rejects negotiations and the road map's goal of a viable Palestinian state alongside a secure Israel. With the settlement blocs, Israel would protrude about 20km into the West Bank at several points and slice up the Palestinian area.

Israel's "primary goal" after the 28 March legislative elections will be to persuade the United States to agree to such an annexation in exchange for Israel unilaterally withdrawing from outlying settlements, Haaretz newspaper reported.

Israel would be able to argue that, with Hamas in power, the road map, to which it raised sweeping objections from the start, is now a dead duck. Hamas advocates Israel's replacement with an Islamic state, has carried out dozens of suicide bombings, and, unlike Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, rejects the road map's plan for a two-state compromise.

So what is new here? Hamas's election is fairly new I suppose but there's nothing new about Israel's annexationist designs on the West Bank. Blaming the Palestinians for Israel's land theft is hardly new. So it must simply be that Israel is going to ask America to abandon the pretence that the so-called roadmap was a way forward. That's it. Israel practically re-wrote the roadmap as soon as America produced it. But still it didn't like it. So now both Israel and America can abandon it and say it was the Palestinians fault. Blame the victims. Brilliant! But new?...