Following the expansion of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, some settlers are now eyeing areas that Palestinians see as the heart of a future Palestinian state. Those settlers are looking to US President Donald Trump to fulfill their dream of establishing sovereignty over those territories. British news agency Reuters reported this news in a report.
Jewish settlements in the West Bank have expanded rapidly since Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu returned to power under a far-right nationalist coalition two years ago. During that time, settler violence reached such a level that the United States was forced to impose sanctions on them.
Israeli flags have been flown on hilltops in recent weeks at the request of some settlers in the West Bank's Jordan Valley. And the incident has raised concerns among local Palestinians about greater control of those territories. Some settlers even prayed for Trump's victory before the US election.
Activist and author Israel Medad supports Israeli occupation of the West Bank. He has been living in a settlement in the Shilo region there for more than four decades. Speaking to Reuters at his home about Trump's victory, he said, 'We have high hopes. Even to a certain extent we are excited.'
Settlers also celebrated the nomination of officials with pro-Israel views in the Trump administration. One of them, evangelical Christian and ambassador Mike Huckabee, said the West Bank is not under occupation and he prefers the word 'community' to 'settlements'.
In the past month, Israeli government ministers and settler advocates who have forged ties with US Christian rights groups have increasingly pushed the once-fringe idea of ”restoring sovereignty” over the West Bank in public comments. However, the Netanyahu government has not yet announced any official decision on the matter. A spokesman for Netanyahu's office, when contacted for comment for this report, declined to comment.
Like most countries in the world, Saudi Arabia rejects Israel's sovereignty over the West Bank. So Trump will not support any move that could jeopardize Washington's strategic ambitions for a broader deal under the Abraham Accords to normalize relations with Israel.
“Trump's desire to expand the Abraham Accords will be a top priority,” said Dennis Ross, a former Middle East negotiator in both Democratic and Republican administrations, based on his own assessment of Trump's foreign policy considerations.
He said, 'If Israel were to formally absorb the West Bank, Saudi Arabia would not be interested in joining that alliance.'
The accession process would bury any hope of a two-state solution, which includes proposals for an independent Palestinian state, and would also complicate efforts to resolve the more than year-old war in Gaza, which has now spilled over into neighboring Lebanon.
When Trump took office in Washington as president, he moved the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. In the process, he ended Washington's longstanding position that the settlements were illegal. But Trump's plan to create a Palestinian state along existing borders in 2020 disrupts Netanyahu's push for Israeli sovereignty in the region.
But the US president, newly elected for a second term, has yet to reveal what his plans are for the region. Trump transition spokeswoman Carolyn Levitt did not respond to Reuters when asked about this. Just said, Trump will 'restore peace through global power.'
Nevertheless, Bezalel Smotrich, Israel's finance minister and one of the government's leading colonial ministers, said last week that he thinks Israel will be able to annex the West Bank as early as next year, with the support of the Trump administration.
In an interview, Israel Ganz, head of the Yesha Council, an umbrella group of Jewish municipalities in the West Bank, said he thinks the Trump administration will let the Israeli government go its own way.
Before the November 5 election, Ganz held a special prayer for Trump's victory at the ruins of an old Byzantine basilica in Shiloh.
“We prayed that God would bring better days for the people of the United States and Israel,” he said.
Shiloh has become a popular meeting place for US politicians such as Trump's Defense Secretary nominees Michelle Dale Huckabee and Pete Hegseth.
Any decision on affiliation would be an important issue for the Israeli government, Huckabee told Arutz Sheva, an Israeli news outlet affiliated with Smotrich's Religious Zionism movement, last week. Huckabee's immediate request for comment was not immediately received by Reuters.
Wasel Abu Youssef, a senior official at the Palestine Liberation Organization, said any such move by the Israeli government “will not change the fact that this is Palestinian land.”
surround
Shiloh is located near the center of the West Bank along with the neighboring settlements of Eli. It's a smooth one-hour motorway drive along Route 60 from Jerusalem, a stark contrast to the potholed roads that connect the region's Palestinian cities.
Bashar al-Qaryuti, a Palestinian activist from the village of Qaryut, said the expansion of settlements in Shiloh and Eli has surrounded Palestinian villages in the central West Bank.
Al-Qaryuti described the expansion of the settlers without waiting for official paperwork from the Israeli government. This trend was also noted by the Israeli activist group Peace Now, which tracks the issue.
“This is happening in the settlement fields,” al-Qaryuti told Reuters by phone. The central areas of the West Bank are now under the control of the settlers.'
Many in Israel refer to the West Bank as Judea and Samaria in the old biblical terms. It is a kidney-shaped region about 100 km (60 mi) long and 50 km (30 mi) wide. Since its occupation by Israel in the 1967 Middle East War, it has become a focal point of Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Most countries consider it occupied territory and the settlements are considered illegal under international law. The UN's top court upheld it in July.
According to UN estimates, around 750,000 Palestinians were displaced with the creation of Israel in 1948. Palestinians claim the West Bank, along with the Mediterranean enclave of Gaza in the south, as the nucleus of a future independent state.
But since the Oslo Interim Peace Accords 30 years ago, the expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank has completely changed the face of the area.
Shiloh was founded by the ancient Israelite Jews after returning from exile in Egypt and living there for 300 years. But then it was revered as the tabernacle site. Modern Shiloh was founded in the 1970s. Its population in 2022 was about 5 thousand.
Proponents of Jewish settlements believe that the biblical connection gives them the right to live there, regardless of what international law says.
Medad said, 'Even if Byzantines, Romans, Mamluks and Ottomans ruled it, it was our country.'
As settler advocates reject the term 'annexation'. The word, they say, refers to taking possession of a foreign territory.
Settlements in the West Bank reach record levels in 2023. Since the war in Gaza began last October, new roads and ground works have visibly changed the appearance of the mountains across the area.
Even criticism of the Biden administration did not stop it.
At the same time, Jewish settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, including the area around Shiloh, has escalated despite international condemnation and US and European sanctions. As recently as this week, certain individuals who are believed to have taken over a prominent part have been banned.
Settler leaders, including Ganj, say violence has no place in their movement. Settler groups argue that they provide security for the rest of the Israelis with their presence in Palestinian towns and neighborhoods.
‘Immutable truth’
Since Netanyahu's government came to power, a series of steps have been taken to consolidate Israel's position in the West Bank, which states that 'the Jewish people have a natural right to the land of Israel.'
Speaking at his office in the Knesset, Smotrich's parliamentary party chairman Ohad Tal said, 'We are changing a lot of things on the ground so that the fact that there is Israel in Judea and Samaria becomes a reality.'
At the time, he added, “a complete system has been created for the effective exercise of sovereignty in Judea and Samaria.” And 'it is an immutable fact that there is and will be a Jewish presence.'
Many settlement-related tasks that were previously handled by the military have now been handed over to the Settlement Administration. It is a civilian agency that is directly accountable to Finance Minister Smotrich. The agency has an additional defense ministry portfolio, which puts it in charge of managing the West Bank.
About 6,000 acres (2,400 hectares) of land will be declared Israeli state land in 2024, the largest annual increase on record and half of all areas declared state land in the past three decades, Peace Now reported in an October report. State land is a classification of land that facilitates settlement.
A separate analysis by Peace Now found that at least 43 new settler outposts were established in the past year, compared to an average of less than seven a year since 1996.
The outposts have been lined with several kilometers of new roads and other infrastructure. They often serve to monitor existing settlements on nearby hilltops and expand base positions. They are often built illegally under Israeli law. However, the Yesha Council said government assistance has been extended to around 70 this year.
'It's a clever idea because it's disturbing,' said Ziv Stahl, a director of Yesh Din, another Israeli group that tracks settlements.
He further said, 'They are not making laws now. They say “we're annexing the West Bank”, that's all they're doing.'
