Late last month, on the eve of his latest meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House, U.S. President Donald Trump issued a bombshell statement.
“I will not allow Israel to annex the West Bank,” said Trump, whom Netanyahu has often hailed as the most pro-Israel president in American history. “It’s not going to happen,” he added.
Trump, who has danced around the issue of Palestinian statehood, made that abrupt but telling comment against the backdrop of recent developments.
Several Israeli ministers, notably Finance Minister Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, have openly called for annexation.
Earlier this year, the Knesset overwhelmingly approved a non-binding motion to annex the West Bank, which is home to about 500,000 Jews and some three million Palestinians.
A wave of Western states, from Britain and Canada to France and Australia, have recognized Palestinian statehood as pressure mounts on Israel to end its 53-year occupation of the West Bank and embrace a two-state solution.
Although Israel has denounced calls for Palestinian statehood, the Israeli government has not responded to Trump’s bold remarks about annexation. The reason is clear. Netanyahu does not want to challenge or annoy Trump, a thin-skinned politician who cannot tolerate criticism.
Nonetheless, Netanyahu’s government, the most right-wing in Israeli history, has been taking concerted concrete steps to ensure that the West Bank — the historic homeland of the Jewish people — will remain in Israel’s hands.
Last year, in accordance with Netanyahu’s consent, Smotrich transferred control of civilian affairs in the West Bank from the army to a handpicked appointee in the Ministry of Defence. This bureaucratic stratagem gave Smotrich infinitely more power to establish facts on the ground in the West Bank.
This past summer, Smotrich announced that Israel will invest almost $1 billion to build 3,400 housing units in E-1, an expanse of hilly land in the West Bank near Jerusalem.
This project, designed to connect Jerusalem to the huge settlement of Ma’ale Adumim, will effectively cut the West Bank into two separate segments, much to Israel’s geopolitical advantage. It will also impede economic development in East Jerusalem, inhabited mainly by Palestinians, and in West Bank towns such as Ramallah and Bethlehem.
A few months prior to Smotrich’s announcement, Israel green lighted a plan to build 22 new settlements in the West Bank, which already is dotted with more than 130 such outposts. It was the largest number of settlements approved in one fell swoop since the 1990s.
Since Netanyahu’s return as prime minister at the end of 2021, his government has also permitted more than 150 unauthorized outposts to be constructed in the West Bank.
According to Peace Now, Israeli settlers have built 140 illegal roads in the past two years, most of which traverse private Palestinian land. These roads, to which Palestinians are barred, connect the web of outposts.
Looking at the big picture, the Israeli government has invested about one-third of Israel’s entire inter-city road budget to serve the needs of West Bank settlers.
In addition, Netanyahu is considering a plan to resume land registration in the West Bank under the Absentee Property Law. Suspended decades ago, this legislation may well compel Palestinians to offer tangible proof of land ownership, or face potential confiscation of their property.
The Israeli government, in the meantime, has expropriated almost 2,600 hectares of Palestinian lands by declaring them “state lands.”
Peace Now contends that these policy choices have encouraged settler violence. Settlers, under the protection of the army and the police, have prevented Palestinians from accessing large areas in the West Bank. By all accounts, their goal is to drive Palestinians off their land.
Peace Now and Kerem Navot, in a joint report published nine months ago, charged that upwards of 2,000 residents from 60 Palestinian communities have been expelled from their lands since 2023.
Over the past year, the Israeli army has conducted what Netanyahu has described as “extensive and significant” military operations throughout the West Bank to eradicate terrorism. The towns of Jenin and Nablus have been the focus of this campaign.
Since the start of the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip, Hamas has urged Palestinians to mobilize and confront Israeli forces in the West Bank.
The Palestinian Authority, which exercises a limited degree of control over the West Bank, has carried out its own offensive in coordination with Israel.
Israel’s actions, aimed at ensuring that the West Bank will remain under its domination, means that there is no end in sight to its occupation.
Yesh Din, an Israeli human rights organization, points out that formal annexation would undermine Palestinian property rights by allowing land expropriation and nationalization of private property through the application of the Absentee Property Law and other mechanisms.
Peace Now says that formal annexation would allow the Israeli government to develop settlements more easily and without regard to international law.
While it is clear that the Israeli government is unlikely to resort to formal annexation as long as Trump is president, Israel, as Peace Now states, has “narrowed the gap between talk and action, and full-blown annexation is taking shape.”
Israel’s moves are foreclosing the possibility of a two-state solution and sowing the seeds of further conflict in the West Bank.