The combination of Trump’s election and Netanyahu’s coalition raises the prospects of Israel formally annexing part of the West Bank. But the focus on the frontal threat risks obscuring what the Israeli government will first try to do under the table.
History may not repeat, but Donald Trump’s imminent return to the Oval Office looks in many ways like it could rhyme with his previous term when it comes to Israeli designs on West Bank annexation. His election was greeted with Bezalel Smotrich’s pronouncement that 2025 will be the “year of sovereignty in Judea and Samaria” and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s appointment of Yechiel Leiter—a longtime supporter of annexation who in 2020 authored a plan for how Israel should carry it out under a Trump administration—as his next ambassador to Washington. Trump’s early nominations related to Israel, including Mike Huckabee as his ambassador and Marco Rubio as secretary of state, have been supportive of Israeli territorial maximalism in the past. Huckabee specifically has supported Israeli annexation while denying that there is any status of occupation in the West Bank and questioning whether Palestinian is even a category that exists. The right-wing celebration in Israel about the U.S. potentially supporting—if not outright urging—a change to the West Bank’s legal status may be premature, but it is not without merit.
The resurrected threat of imminent annexation has raised alarm bells in both the U.S. and Israel, with those who oppose Israel taking steps that make a future separation from the Palestinians impossible gearing up to make the case against it. As in 2019 and 2020, this campaign will be important in pointing out the costs and risks to Israeli and American interests if annexation moves forward, whether it be burdening Israel’s economy even further when its outlook is worse than it has been in decades, stretching the IDF even thinner at a precarious time, or making it harder for Israel to isolate Iran regionally with Sunni states who need Israel to alleviate the situation for Palestinians rather than make it more dire. But there is risk involved in the anti-annexation campaign itself: its inevitable and understandable focus on the highest-profile frontal risk of de jure application of Israeli sovereignty will take attention away from the lower-profile but equally damaging de facto annexation that has been accelerating since October 7.
“There is risk involved in the anti-annexation campaign itself: its inevitable and understandable focus on the highest-profile frontal risk of de jure application of Israeli sovereignty will take attention away from the lower-profile but equally damaging de facto annexation that has been accelerating since October 7.”
One of the things that has changed since the last time Trump was in office is that the architects of Israeli plans for annexation are now in positions of power, and they are far savvier. The focus on formal annexation in the period between the collapse of Palestinian engagement with the Trump administration after the recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and the negotiation of the Abraham Accords created a problem for annexation proponents. Their drive to see it happen made it difficult for them to endorse Trump’s peace plan despite the fact that it would have allowed Israel to annex 30% of the West Bank, since they had been set on annexation without any of the conditions or caveats that the plan contained. More importantly, the firestorm around annexation led the UAE to tie dropping annexation to normalization with Israel, which put the annexationists on their heels and ultimately doomed their dreams for Israeli sovereignty in the West Bank given the popularity of normalization with Israelis. This failure led them to recalibrate, and they did so with the understanding that acting under the radar was better for their aims than moving forward with grand pronouncements.
In the four years that have passed since the last Trump administration, Smotrich has created a Settlements Administration within the Defense Ministry, appointed his close associate to run it, and imbued it with nearly complete authority to determine what happens in the West Bank. The Settlements Administration approves settlement plans, infrastructure improvements, roads, and new land registration. On May 29, IDF Central Command formally transferred its authorities over even more issues to Smotrich’s deputy, such as master planning, management of regional councils, and perhaps most crucially the power to determine the legality of real estate transactions. Anything that Smotrich and other annexation proponents want to do short of formally declaring sovereignty can now be done on their own, and they have made quick use of these powers, particularly since October 7 while most Israelis’ attention has been elsewhere.
“Anything that Smotrich and other annexation proponents want to do short of formally declaring sovereignty can now be done on their own, and they have made quick use of these powers, particularly since October 7 while most Israelis’ attention has been elsewhere.”
Since October 7 alone, 43 new illegal outposts have been established in the West Bank, which is six times the yearly average dating back three decades, and none of them have been—or are likely to be—subject to enforcement. Eight existing illegal outposts were retroactively legalized. 24 square kilometers were declared state land—the first step to making it available for new settlements—which is almost half of the total area designated as state land since the Oslo Accords. These are all things that, unlike approval of new housing units in existing settlements or formal creation of completely new settlements, fly under the radar but unmistakably change the situation on the ground and deepen Israeli control of new areas. When people talk about de facto annexation or creeping annexation, this is what they mean. And since Smotrich has taken control, the de facto annexation is no longer creeping, but racing ahead.
When Smotrich openly declares that the coming year will be the one where Israel finally extends sovereignty to the West Bank, I take him at his word that he will work as hard as he can to make it a formal and legal reality. But he is also smart and strategic enough to know that in declaring it, he creates a no-lose situation for himself. If he pulls it off, it is an enormous win. But just by stating it out loud, he knows that he will attract stronger opposition once again, and that the opposition will be geared toward stopping what is effectively the nuclear threat of formal annexation while the conventional threat of changing the West Bank’s status illegal outpost by illegal outpost will be obscured. He is, in fact, counting on this, since it is the heart of his strategy. It is an effective use of misdirection.
“When Smotrich openly declares that the coming year will be the one where Israel finally extends sovereignty to the West Bank, he creates a no-lose situation for himself. If he pulls it off, it is an enormous win. But just by stating it out loud, he knows that he will attract stronger opposition once again, and that the opposition will be geared toward stopping what is effectively the nuclear threat of formal annexation while the conventional threat of changing the West Bank’s status illegal outpost by illegal outpost will be obscured.”
The battle to stop formal annexation is important, and it must be waged in every way possible. But unlike last time, it has to be paired with an equally vigorous campaign to stop the de facto annexation that is beginning to make formal annexation irrelevant. If not, then Smotrich and his compatriots will win before the starting gun is fired and irrespective of the final result.