RAMALLAH

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday that an Israeli military presence in the West Bank was "essential" to Israel's existence.

"The presence of the Israeli army between Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea is necessary to prevent radical Islamic extremists from taking control of the area," Netanyahu said at a military headquarters in the Jewish-only Beit El settlement near the West Bank city of Ramallah.

"Without our presence here [in the West Bank], we will find ourselves against extremists who seek to destroy the state of Israel," he added.

Netanyahu claimed that Israeli military activity in the West Bank served to "benefit" both the Palestinian Authority and the Palestinian people.

"Our military action in Judea and Samaria [i.e., the West Bank] is to protect the Palestinian public from the radical Islamic group, which could take over the Palestinian public," he added.

Palestinian legal expert Hanna Issa said Netanyahu's speech was aimed at wooing voters ahead of next week's election.

"It also reflects the Israeli perception of the West Bank in any future agreement with the Palestinians," Issa told The Anadolu Agency.

He said Israel would view the West Bank in terms of "strategic depth" in any future peace deal.

"In any final agreement, Israel wants to maintain the West Bank's six major settlement blocs: Maale Adumim, Modi'in, Gush Etzion, Ariel, Kiryat Arba and Beit El," he said.

Peace talks between Israeli and Palestinian negotiators ground to a halt one year ago over Israel's refusal to release a group of Palestinian prisoners despite earlier pledges to do so.

The roots of the Palestine-Israel conflict date back to 1917, when the British government, in the now-famous "Balfour Declaration," called for the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.

In 1948, with the expiry of a UN "mandate" awarded to Great Britain, a new state – Israel – was declared inside historical Palestine.

As a result, some 700,000 Palestinians fled their homes, or were forcibly expelled, while hundreds of Palestinian villages and cities were razed to the ground by invading Jewish forces.

Israel went on to occupy East Jerusalem and the West Bank during the 1967 Middle East War. It later annexed the holy city in 1980, claiming it as the capital of the self-proclaimed Jewish state – a move never recognized by the international community.

Palestinians want their own independent state in the Gaza Strip and West Bank, with East Jerusalem as its capital.