TEL AVIV—The right wing in Israel is in full celebration mode. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his ministers rushed to congratulate Donald Trump on his victory. Netanyahu boasted at the beginning of the week that he had already had time to speak with Trump three times since his election.
After expressing its joy over Trump’s win and offering blessings for the next MAGA regime, though, the Israeli government has now begun to speak openly about its expectations from the new administration in Washington.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich hailed Trump at a meeting of the parliamentary caucus of his National Religious Party–Religious Zionism and called for the official annexation of all West Bank territories:
“After years in which, unfortunately, the current [Biden] administration chose to interfere in Israeli democracy and personally not to cooperate with me as the Minister of Finance of the State of Israel, I congratulate the administration that’s been elected and look forward to joint work and strong cooperation for the benefit of strengthening the economic and commercial relations between the countries.
“Trump’s victory also brings with it an important opportunity for our country. We were a step away from applying sovereignty to the settlements in Judea and Samaria [the West Bank], and now it’s time to do it.”
Smotrich also said:
“Today there is a broad consensus…opposing the establishment of a Palestinian state that would endanger the existence of the State of Israel. 2025 will be the year of sovereignty in Judea and Samaria. I have given instructions to the Directorate of Settlements in the Ministry of Defense and the Civil Administration to begin professional and comprehensive staff work to prepare the infrastructure required for the application of sovereignty.”
“Applying sovereignty” is the government’s code word for annexation of Palestinian lands into Israel.
He later added that he plans to spearhead an effort requesting that the incoming Trump administration grant full legal recognition to Israel’s takeover of the West Bank and possibly chunks of Gaza and support Israel in garnering international recognition for its actions.
Smotrich is not alone in his intentions. In the newspaper Israel Hayom, it was reported that “in the office of the Prime Minister” the proposal to “apply sovereignty” in the occupied West Bank is back on the agenda.
On television, Network B reported that Netanyahu said in closed conversations in recent days that, following Trump’s entry into the White House, the plans for annexing the West Bank should be brought up again.
In this context, Netanyahu appointed the extremist Yechiel Leiter as Israel’s ambassador to Washington this past weekend. The newspaper Haaretz announced that Leiter, Netanyahu’s former chief of staff, immigrated to Israel about four decades ago as part of a group of activists in the terrorist organization founded by Meir Kahane in the U.S.
Since then, Leiter has been an activist for the expansion of settlements in Hebron and the rest of the occupied West Bank and has also served as a senior researcher at the Ecclesiastical Forum. He recently published articles calling for Israel to dismantle the Palestinian Authority and annex the West Bank.
Becoming Israeli ambassador to the U.S. will be Leiter’s first diplomatic post. His appointment provides additional support for the belief that Netanyahu is seeking to advance the annexation plans with the new administration in Washington.
On the other hand, Trump’s designated ambassador to Israel, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, signaled in an interview this week that Trump may support the annexation of the West Bank. During his visit to the West Bank settlements in 2017, Huckabee—a former pastor and leader of the right-wing Evangelical movement in the U.S.—said:
“There is no such thing as the West Bank; there is Judea and Samaria. There is no such thing as settlements; these are communities, neighborhoods, and cities. There is no such thing as conquest.”
When running for the Republican nomination in 2015, Huckabee declared, “There’s no such thing as a Palestinian,” reinforcing remarks he’d made in an earlier presidential run, when he said that the Palestinian identity is “a political tool to try and force land away from Israel.”
Trump’s personal intentions are still unclear. Due to his proximity to the extreme right in Israel, it is possible that he will give the green light to the annexation. But it is also possible that he would prefer to promote other interests in the region, such as normalization with Saudi Arabia, which fell off the agenda following the ongoing massacre in Gaza.
In any case, the right-wing government’s pursuit of annexing the occupied territories is expected to prolong the war and exacerbate the regional conflict. Instead of seeking a ceasefire, Netanyahu and his partners are promoting a dangerous vision that will harm not only the Palestinians but also the interests of the masses of the people in Israel and the prospect of peace in the Middle East.
This is a translated and edited version of an article that appeared Nov. 13 in Zo HaDerekh.
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