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Israeli Minister Says "Time Has Come" to Annex West Bank

Louisa Loveluck and Lior Soroka

Updated November 11, 2024 at 3:11 p.m. EST

Published November 11, 2024 at 12:43 a.m. EST


Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich speaks at a conference in southern Israel on the resettlement of the Gaza Strip on Oct. 21. (Tomer Appelbaun/Reuters)


Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich welcomed President Donald Trump’s electoral victory Monday, saying that “the time has come” to extend full Israeli sovereignty over the occupied West Bank.


“Trump’s victory brings an important opportunity for the State of Israel,” Smotrich told supporters at a party conference, according to comments shared by his spokesman. During Trump’s first term, he said, “we were on the verge of applying sovereignty over the settlements” in the West Bank, “and now the time has come to make it a reality.”


Smotrich said that he had instructed the Defense Ministry’s settlement administration division, as well as the Israeli army’s Civil Administration in the West Bank, to prepare plans accordingly, according to a summary shared by his spokesman.


Since late 2022, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government has dramatically expanded Israel’s footprint in the occupied West Bank, where an estimated 3 million Palestinians live alongside more than 500,000 settlers.


Netanyahu’s administration has approved strategic land seizures and major settlement construction, escalated demolition of Palestinian property and increased state support for illegally built settler outposts. Jewish settler violence against Palestinian residents has grown commonplace, often taking place with Israeli soldiers or policemen at the scene.


The announcement Monday appeared to suggest that Israel was moving toward consolidating changes announced in late May, when the army reassigned significant management powers over the West Bank to a newly created “deputy head” position within the Civil Administration, Israel’s governing body there. That same day, the role was given to Hillel Roth, a close associate of Smotrich, who is himself a longtime settler advocate.


“Moving forward, I intend to lead a government decision stating that the Israeli government will work with President Trump’s new administration and the international community to apply sovereignty and seek American recognition,” Smotrich said.


The Israeli government has routinely ignored the Biden administration’s insistence that any diplomatic solution to the war in Gaza include a path to an independent Palestinian state. Full annexation of the West Bank would mark the death knell to that lingering ambition, rights groups say.


In his comments Monday, Smotrich explicitly linked Trump’s election to his proposed path forward.


“After years in which, unfortunately, the current administration chose to interfere in Israeli democracy and personally refused to cooperate with me as Israel’s finance minister, Trump’s victory also brings an important opportunity,” Smotrich said, adding that “2025 is the year of sovereignty in Judea and Samaria,” using the biblical name for the West Bank.



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