“Netanyahu may want to rush through a vote on the annexation plan ahead of the November U.S. presidential election. But this mapping committee could throw him off schedule, notes former U.S. ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro.
“‘Leaving aside technical aspects, like whether the work can even be done right now because of the coronavirus restrictions, the mapping committee is likely to encounter a dynamic in which the leaders of the settlement communities will lobby for expanded definitions of their boundaries, and in the aggregate, that could bring the territory annexed to well above the 30 percent the Trump administration has indicated it would support,’ says Shapiro, currently a distinguished visiting fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University. ‘That could slow down the entire process…'”