Trump Comeback Restarts Israeli Public Debate on West Bank Annexation

When Donald Trump presented his 2020 plan to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it included the Israeli annexation of swathes of the occupied West Bank, a controversial aspiration that has been revived by his reelection.

In his previous stint as prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu pushed for partial annexation of the West Bank, but he relented in 2020 under international pressure and following a deal to normalize relations with the UAE.

With Trump returning to the White House, pro-annexation Israelis are hoping to rekindle the idea.

Far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, himself a settler in the Palestinian territory, said recently that 2025 would be "the year of sovereignty in Judea and Samaria", referring to the biblical name that Israel uses for the West Bank, AFP reported.
The territory was part of the British colony of Mandatory Palestine, from which Israel was carved during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.

Israel conquered the territory fin the 1967 Arab-Israeli war and has occupied it ever since.

Today, many Jews in Israel consider the West Bank part of their historical homeland and reject the idea of a Palestinian state in the territory, with hundreds of thousands having settled in the territory.

Excluding Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem and its 200,000 Jewish residents, the West Bank is home to around 490,000 Israelis in settlements considered illegal under international law.

Around three million Palestinians live in the West Bank.

- 'Make a decision' -

Israel Ganz, head of the Yesha Council, an umbrella organization for the municipal councils of West Bank settlements, insisted the status quo could not continue.

"The State of Israel must make a decision," he said.

Without sovereignty, he added, "no one is responsible for infrastructure, roads, water and electricity."

"We will do everything in our power to apply Israeli sovereignty, at least over Area C," he said, referring to territory under sole Israeli administration that covers 60 percent of the West Bank, including the vast majority of Israeli settlements.

Even before taking office, Trump and his incoming administration have made a number of moves that have raised the hopes of pro-annexation Israelis.

The president-elect nominated the pro-settlement Baptist minister Mike Huckabee to be his ambassador to Israel. His nominee for secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said this would be "the most pro-Israel administration in American history" and that it would lift US sanctions on settlers.

Eugene Kontorovich of the conservative think thank Misgav Institute pointed out that the Middle East was a very different place to what it was during Trump's first term.

The war against Hamas in Gaza, Israel's hammering of Hezbollah in Lebanon and the fall of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, all allies of Israel's arch-foe Iran, have transformed the region.

The two-state solution, which would create an independent Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank, has been the basis of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations going back decades.

- 'Nightmare scenario' -

Even before Trump won November's US presidential election, NGOs were denouncing what they called a de facto annexation, pointing to a spike in land grabs and an overhaul of the bureaucratic and administrative structures Israel uses to manage the West Bank.

An outright, de jure annexation would be another matter, however.

Israel cannot expropriate private West Bank land at the moment, but "once annexed, Israeli law would allow it. That's a major change", said Aviv Tatarsky, from the Israeli anti-settlement organisation Ir Amim.

He said that in the event that Israel annexes Area C, Palestinians there would likely not be granted residence permits and the accompanying rights.

The permits, which Palestinians in east Jerusalem received, allow people freedom of movement within Israel and the right to use Israeli courts. West Bank Palestinians can resort to the supreme court, but not lower ones.

Tatarsky said that for Palestinians across the West Bank, annexation would constitute "a nightmare scenario".

Over 90 percent of them live in areas A and B, under full or partial control of the Palestinian Authority.

But, Tatarsky pointed out, "their daily needs and routine are indissociable from Area C," the only contiguous portion of the West Bank, where most agricultural lands are and which breaks up areas A and B into hundreds of territorial islets.

At 80, Syrian Abdel Rahman Athab still holds on to hope of finding his son, missing for 11 years. He searched tirelessly—watching former detainees leave prisons, combing through hospitals, and finally, visiting suspected mass grave sites. Despite losing three other children, Athab clings to the hope of finding his son or at least laying him to rest.

The Syrian Network for Human Rights estimates that since 2011, about 136,614 people have been forcibly disappeared or arbitrarily detained. Of these, over 113,000 remain missing, leaving families in heartbreaking uncertainty.

The pain of Athab’s family began with the start of Syria’s revolutionary unrest. The father, who had six sons and two daughters, recalls with deep sorrow: “Four were engineers, and two were teachers. At the onset of the revolution, they joined protests against the regime, and I stood with them.”

By late 2011, three of his sons were killed, their bodies returned in disfigured remains wrapped in black bags. Athab buried them, held a mourning service, and, though devastated, accepted their deaths, seeing them as martyrs for Syria. “I found comfort knowing they were in a safer place,” he said.

However, just two years after losing his sons, Athab’s fourth child disappeared in Damascus. The remaining members of his family fled the country, leaving the father’s heartache to grow even deeper.

In his ongoing search for his missing son, Athab told Asharq Al-Awsat that he and his family have been tracing newly uncovered mass grave sites across Syria in the past month.

On January 4, local Syrian outlets reported that residents found a mass grave near the Ninth Division in the town of Sanamayn, located in the northern countryside of Daraa in southern Syria.

This discovery followed another mass grave found about two weeks earlier at “Al-Kuwaiti Farm” on the outskirts of central Daraa.

The area had been under the control of a militia linked to the military intelligence branch, and 31 bodies, including those of women and a child, were recovered.

Additionally, a team from Human Rights Watch reported visiting a site in the al-Tadamon neighborhood of southern Damascus on December 11 and 12, 2024.

They found a large number of human remains at the location of a massacre that took place in April 2013, with more scattered around the surrounding area.

Trump Comeback Restarts Israeli Public Debate on West Bank Annexation