Israeli settlers see Trump’s win as aiding goal of annexing West Bank

Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s hard-right finance minister, posted a comment on the social platform X the day after Donald Trump won the U.S. presidential election that reflected the delight of the pro-settlement camp.

Using the biblical terms for the occupied West Bank, he wrote, “2025 is the year of Israeli sovereignty over Judea and Samaria.”

Bitter responses followed from some Israelis, who berated him for not wishing instead for more consensus outcomes: the end of the multifront war that the country has been battling since coming under Hamas attack in October 2023, and the bringing home of the 101 hostages still held in Gaza – an ongoing national trauma.

But the pro-settlement movement in Israel – including Mr. Smotrich, its main advocate in the government – is exulting at what it perceives as a possible green light from the incoming Trump Middle East team to pursue annexation of the West Bank, even without the support of the broader Israeli public.

In constructing the current government coalition, the most religious and far-right in the country’s history, two years ago, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu granted Mr. Smotrich unprecedented power to oversee Israel’s settlement enterprise and civil administration in the West Bank.

So much so that many experts say annexation of the part of the West Bank where most Jewish settlers live has already become a reality, sparking ire both regionally and internationally. For decades the existence and growth of settlements have been an obstacle to forging a two-state solution for Israelis and Palestinians.

In the last year, with most Israelis’ focus on the post-Oct. 7 war in Gaza, settlement construction in the West Bank has ballooned alongside new roads and infrastructure, including a dramatic increase in the establishment of unauthorized settler outposts.

In a new report, Israeli human rights groups describe what they say are significant structural and legal changes by the government that “alter the face of the West Bank and the structure of Israeli control there.”

The government, the report says, is “methodically implementing a strategy designed to achieve the political vision of applying full Israeli sovereignty to the West Bank, while establishing a reality of Jewish supremacy and forcing the Palestinians living in the area into to the smallest possible geographical space.”

An aim to weaken opposition to annexation

Yael Berda, a legal scholar and professor of sociology at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, says the recent spike in settler violence is not haphazard, but fits into a plan to transfer Palestinian residents from what is known as “Area C,” the 60% of the West Bank that has both Jewish and Palestinian communities.

“They are [de facto] annexing where there are Jews living, which is why the fight is so intense to get Palestinians who live there off the land,” says Dr. Berda, author of “The Bureaucracy of the Occupation in the West Bank.”

Palestinians have long claimed all areas of the West Bank as part of their own future state, while settlers see the territory as their biblical birthright. For them, Palestinian statehood is not only a security threat, but also anathema to historic Jewish claims.

The violence in Area C, which has included deadly settler rampages, led the Biden administration to impose sanctions on a key settler group – a development that Israel’s right-wing is hoping a Trump White House will undo.

According to Dr. Berda, the main goal of the government’s controversial judicial overhaul plan, which elicited months of massive pro-democracy demonstrations in Israel in the months before the Israel-Hamas war, was West Bank annexation. By weakening the Supreme Court and the state’s legal advisers, she argues, the government had hoped to stymie the very institutions that have served as the primary check on the settlement project.

Under Finance Minister Smotrich, almost 6,000 acres of West Bank land have been declared state land and 50 new settler outposts have been established with organizational and funding support from the government, according to Hagit Ofran, who leads Peace Now’s Settlement Watch division.

With these outposts, “Small groups of settlers take over huge amounts of land and on a daily basis kick out Palestinians from their land, not allowing them to go there with their flocks or cultivate their land,” says Ms. Ofran. “They are taking hill after hill, and the government puts $75 million into their development – something we had not seen before. ... What I suspect we will see under Trump is the expulsion of Palestinians will be even more organized.”

The most recent example of one kind of rule for Jewish settlers and another for Palestinians in the West Bank is the decision last week by new Defense Minister Israel Katz to end administrative detention only for settlers – a step the Biden administration condemned. Administrative detention is a tool used by Israel to detain terror suspects without trial.

In an act of brazenness Friday, Jewish settlers even attacked senior Israeli military officers, including a general in charge of the army’s command in the West Bank.

“The brave man ... seizes the opportunity”

Yisrael Medad, a spokesperson for The Yesha Council, an umbrella group of West Bank settlements, condemned violence of any kind carried out by settlers, saying its perpetrators were outside the movement’s mainstream.

He says he is encouraged by Mr. Trump’s victory, noting that in his first term as president, settlements were declared not to be a violation of international law, reversing longstanding U.S. policy and opening the door to annexation.

“The brave man is the one who seizes the opportunity, and that is what we have to do now and do the best we can,” says Mr. Medad.

According to Eitay Mack, an Israeli human rights lawyer who has represented Palestinians in the West Bank, “If full annexation happens, there will no longer be a hybrid regime of democracy within the Green Line [the official borders of Israel] and authoritarianism in the West Bank – but just an authoritarian regime based on race.”

Mr. Smotrich, who says there is no such thing as a Palestinian people, said following Trump’s election, “We will apply the sovereignty, together with our American friends.”

Among those friends is Mike Huckabee, named by Mr. Trump as his pick for U.S. ambassador to Israel. The former Arkansas governor and evangelical minister has said he doesn’t view the West Bank as occupied land, nor the half-million settlers there as occupiers.

Signaling the opportunity he sees in Mr. Trump’s return to power, Mr. Netanyahu has appointed Yechiel Leiter, a former settler leader and an advocate of annexation, as Israel’s ambassador to the United States.