Israel’s far-right finance minister, a leading advocate of annexation, is meeting with Trump administration officials this week.
The first was that the United States would take over the Gaza Strip.
The second was that, “over the next four weeks,” Trump would have an announcement about Israeli annexation of the West Bank.
Those four weeks are up on Tuesday, the day Trump addresses a joint session of Congress in a State of the Union-esque speech.
With so much attention on Trump’s unlikely Gaza bid, the West Bank question has somewhat fallen to the wayside. But in recent days, the president’s supporters and opponents have put the West Bank front-and-center, anticipating an imminent Trump statement.
A group of Christian Zionist leaders wrote a petition to Trump in recent days asking him to “reject all efforts… to pressure the Jewish people to relinquish their ancestral homeland in Judea and Samaria,” the Biblical name for the West Bank that Republicans in Washington are increasingly using.
Nimrod Novik, a fellow at the Israel Policy Forum, which opposes annexation, wrote in Haaretz that “the president’s promise to make his position on Israel’s annexation of the territory public has already accelerated its fruition,” adding that such a move “risks violent conflagration.”
Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Six-Day War and fully controls 60% of the area, including all Israeli settlements. The Palestinian Authority governs the remaining 40%, which has the vast majority of the territory’s Palestinians. Israel’s military operates across the entire territory, and recently embarked on a major counter-terror offensive there. Most countries say Israel illegally occupies the West Bank.
Supporters of annexation, including large swaths of the Israeli right, want Israel to extend full sovereignty to the whole territory or to all of its settlements. Annexation would, at least per Israeli law, eliminate any distinction between Israel and the settlements, and would essentially foreclose the establishment of a Palestinian state. Legislation extending sovereignty to some settlements is already moving through Israel’s parliament, the Knesset.
Supporters of annexation have plenty of reason for optimism. Trump’s pick for U.S. ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, supports perpetual Israeli control of the West Bank. One of Trump’s first acts as president was to remove sanctions on extremist Israeli settlers. This week, Trump’s treasury secretary is due to welcome far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, one of the foremost proponents of annexation whom the Biden administration shunned.
Asked about Israeli West Bank annexation in early February, Trump responded, “I’m not going to talk about that. It certainly is a small country in terms of land.”
In 2020, Trump unveiled a plan that would see Israel annex a chunk of the West Bank, including all Israeli settlements, and retain the ability for its army to operate across the whole territory. Palestinian leadership rejected the plan, but it dovetailed with a previous promise by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to annex part of the West Bank.
The plan, however, never came to fruition, as later that year, Israel normalized relations with four Arab countries, pledging as part of the deal not to annex any of the West Bank.
Now, Trump and Netanyahu are both thirsting for a normalization deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia. Most of the Israeli public supports one too. Saudi Arabia has insisted that it will only sign a deal if it includes progress toward a Palestinian state.
So even if Trump does green-light Israeli annexation on Tuesday night, whether Netanyahu follow through with it is another question.
