Smotrich to Netanyahu: ‘No more appropriate time’ than now to annex West Bank

By Sam Sokol 29 July 2025, 12:25 pm

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Sam Sokol is a former political correspondent at The Times of Israel. He was previously a reporter for the Jerusalem Post, Jewish Telegraphic Agency and Haaretz. He is the author of "Putin’s Hybrid War and the Jews"

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, center, speaks at a meeting of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee's Subcommittee for Judea and Samaria at the Knesset in Jerusalem, July 29, 2025. (Danny Shem-Tov/Knesset Spokesman)

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich appeals to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to annex the West Bank, stating that “there is no more appropriate time” to do so than now.

Addressing lawmakers in the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee’s Subcommittee for Judea and Samaria, the far-right politician says that such a move would serve as a corrective for the mistake of withdrawing from Gaza’s Gush Katif settlement bloc in 2005 and that “applying sovereignty has political, security, economic, settlement [and] democratic significance, and also moral and Zionist significance.”

“We are advancing the process in two stages. The first is de facto sovereignty. To do this, a whole series of processes must be carried out, some of them cognitive, in order to normalize settlement. The second part is internal processes within the system so that when the formal act of applying sovereignty happens they will be ready. Very thorough work has been done, both administratively and legally, and we are ready today to press the button,” Smotrich declares.

“I want to take advantage of this platform to call on the prime minister [to] make the decision [and] take courage. Jewish history is behind you, and on your shoulders. We have full support from the US administration, I say this from knowledge… There is no more appropriate time than these days to convene the government and make the decision,” he continues. “The sky will not fall.”

Smotrich’s appeal comes on the heels of comments he made earlier this morning at the Gush Katif Heritage Center in which he said that Israel needs to resettle Gaza on a larger scale than it had prior to the 2005 Disengagement from Gush Katif.