Israel's West Bank settlers hope Trump's return will pave the way for major settlement expansion

[November 13, 2024]  By TIA GOLDENBERG

BEIT EL, West Bank (AP) — As Donald Trump’s victory became apparent in last week's U.S. elections, Jewish West Bank settlement advocates popped bottles of champagne and danced to the Bee Gees at a winery in the heart of the occupied territory, according to a post on Instagram. The winery said it was rolling out a special edition red named for the president-elect.

Settlement supporters believe they have plenty of reasons to celebrate. Not only did the expansion of housing for Jews in the West Bank soar past previous records during Trump's first term, but his administration took unprecedented steps to support Israel’s territorial claims, including recognizing Jerusalem as its capital and moving the U.S. Embassy there, and recognizing Israel's annexation of the Golan Heights.

This time around, as Israel is embroiled in a multifront war, settlement advocates believe Trump’s history of fervent support could translate into their supreme goal: Israeli annexation of the West Bank — a move that critics say would smother any remaining hopes for Palestinian statehood. Some are even gunning for resettling Gaza under a Trump administration.

“God willing, the year 2025 will be the year of sovereignty in Judea and Samaria,” Israeli Finance Minister and settlement firebrand Bezalel Smotrich said Monday, referring to the West Bank by its biblical name, in comments that sparked international uproar. He said he would make sure the government lobbies the Trump administration on the idea.

Israel captured the West Bank, along with east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip in the 1967 Mideast war. The Palestinians want those territories for their hoped-for future state. Israel annexed east Jerusalem in a move most of the international community does not recognize and in 2005 it withdrew its settlers and troops from the Gaza Strip, where it has been fighting a war against Hamas.

Settlement expansion in the West Bank has ballooned during Israel’s open-ended occupation, with more than half a million Israelis living in about 130 settlements and dozens of unauthorized outposts. The Western-backed Palestinian Authority administers semiautonomous parts of the West Bank that are home to most of the Palestinian population.

During his first term as president, Trump abandoned decades-long U.S. opposition to the settlements. He proposed a Mideast plan that would have allowed Israel to keep them all. His ambassador to Israel was a staunch settlement advocate and opponent of Palestinian statehood.

But Trump also took steps that are keeping some settler proponents cautious. His Mideast plan did leave room for a Palestinian state, even if critics say it was an unrealistic vision for one. And the Trump-brokered normalization agreements between Israel and Arab countries held the country back from annexing the West Bank.

While he has not explicitly stated his policy for his second term, his initial administration picks, including ambassadors to Israel and the U.N., are deeply pro-Israel, indicating he likely will not stand in the way of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government advancing settlement building.

“There has never been an American president that has been more helpful in securing an understanding of the sovereignty of Israel,” Mike Huckabee, Trump's nominee for ambassador to Israel, told Israel Army Radio, when asked about the possibility of West Bank annexation. “I fully expect that to continue.”

A spokesperson for Netanyahu declined to say whether the Israeli leader would pursue annexation during Trump's presidency. But Netanyahu has named an American-born, hard-line settlement activist, Yechiel Leiter, to serve as ambassador to Washington.

Rights groups already claim Israel is enforcing an apartheid system in the West Bank, and annexation would open Israel up to similar charges if it doesn’t grant Palestinians there equal rights. Israel opposes giving West Bank Palestinians citizenship, saying it would destroy Israel’s Jewish character.

Palestinian laborers work at the site of a new housing project in the Jewish West Bank Jewish Settlement of Beit El, Monday, Nov. 11, 2024. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)

Regardless of whether annexation comes, settler advocates envision unbridled expansion under Trump and under an Israeli government where settler leaders and supporters hold key positions. They see a presidential term where they will be able to more deeply entrench their presence in the West Bank with a proliferation of housing, roads and industrial zones.

“I’m sure that with President Trump it will be much easier because he supports the state of Israel,” said Israel Ganz, the chairman of the Yesha Council, a settler lobbying group.

Israeli settlement expansion has carried on to varying degrees under multiple American administrations. During Trump's term, Israel advanced nearly 33,000 housing units, according to Peace Now, an antisettlement watchdog group, almost three times as much as during President Barack Obama's second term.

The numbers fell significantly during the first two years of the Biden administration, but shot up again in 2023, shortly after Israel's current far-right, prosettlement government was formed, and have surged throughout the war.

The Biden administration has slapped sanctions on Jewish settlers suspected of fomenting violence against Palestinians, an approach that is likely to end under Trump.

In the West Bank, billboards advertise new settlement housing, beckoning passersby to make their home there. In Beit El, next to the Palestinian administrative center of Ramallah, a new neighborhood boasts not the red-roofed, single-family homes that became icons of the settler movement, but rather six towering multistory apartment buildings that can house hundreds, and look like any Israeli suburb.

Palestinians view the settlements as a violation of international law and an obstacle to peace, a position with wide international support. Israel considers the West Bank to be the historical and biblical heartland of the Jewish people and says any partition should be agreed on in negotiations. Peace talks have been moribund for more than a decade, and support for a Palestinian state among Israelis fell after Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023, attacks that sparked the war.

Wasel Abu Yusuf, a Palestinian official, said Trump hadn’t yet made his positions clear and it was unknown if he would support Israeli annexation.

Dror Etkes, an antisettlement researcher and activist, said that during the first Trump administration, West Bank outpost farms, which have forced entire Palestinian communities off huge swaths of land, saw a “meteoric rise,” as did infrastructure projects that allow settlements to expand, like roads and water systems.

Over the next four years, “we can assume that we will see more significant steps of de facto annexation or maybe even official annexation," Etkes said.

Some settler advocates, like Daniella Weiss, believe Trump will not pressure Netanyahu to withdraw troops swiftly from Gaza, creating an opening for resettlement. That notion would be a nonstarter with other American administrations, and much of the international community would oppose it.

A similar strategy in the early years of Israel's West Bank occupation led to the proliferation of settlements there. Two of Netanyahu's key governing partners also support resettling Gaza, although the Israeli leader has said it is not “realistic.”

Yair Sheleg, a research fellow at Jerusalem's Shalom Hartman Institute who studies the settler movement, said Trump was “fickle” and that in his expected push to normalize ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia, he could end up being less favorable to the settlement enterprise than many hope.

But nonetheless, he said, the overarching feeling among settler advocates is that "Trump understands ... the needs of the settlement enterprise.”

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