Trump nominations set stage for fresh clash between annexation, normalization backers
US president-elect returns to office with plans to expand Abraham Accords, but those pushing for Israel to annex West Bank are still bullish about doing so over next four years
Jacob Magid is The Times of Israel's US bureau chief
Donald Trump’s election victory was celebrated by settler leaders who viewed his ascent as an opportunity for Israel to annex large parts of the West Bank.
“I call on the prime minister and the government of Israel to immediately [expand] construction throughout Judea and Samaria while applying sovereignty to the half a million Jews living here,” said Yochai Damri, the head of the Har Hebron Regional Council in the southern West Bank.
“Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has a historic opportunity before him to… cancel all of the freezes on construction and maybe we can even finally apply sovereignty [to the West Bank],” added Yossi Dagan who heads the Samaria Regional Council in the northern West Bank.
Those statements were not issued in November 2024, but, rather, after Trump’s first election victory, in 2016.
The next four years saw an unprecedented boom in settlement construction. However, efforts to annex those settlements were put on hold due to the Trump administration’s brokering of the Abraham Accords in 2020. The United Arab Emirates agreed to normalize relations with Israel in exchange for Israel shelving its annexation plans for four years.
But with Trump set to return to office as that deadline expires, proponents of annexation are again confident that their time has come.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich predicted last month that 2025 will be “the year of sovereignty in Judea and Samaria.” National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir declared that now is “the time for sovereignty, the time for total victory, the time to legislate the death penalty for terrorists law,” and many other pieces of legislation that he opined Trump would not oppose.
The far-right was further emboldened when Trump tapped former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee to be his ambassador to Israel, in one of his first nominations in the week after the election. A longtime advocate of the settlement movement, Huckabee said last month that Trump could support Israel annexing the West Bank.
However, he added an important caveat: “I won’t make the policy; I will carry out the policy of the president.”
Trump has not weighed in on the issue of annexation, but he has made clear that he would like to pick up where he left off with the Abraham Accords. “If I win, that will be an absolute priority,” he said in an October interview.
Earlier this week, Trump announced that his son-in-law’s father Massad Boulos would serve as his senior adviser on Arab and Middle Eastern Affairs. The Lebanese-American businessman will work together with Trump’s other Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, to advance the Abraham Accords; Boulos will prioritize ties with Arab countries, while Witkoff will work more directly with Israel, a source familiar with the matter told The Times of Israel.
In a Wednesday interview with the French weekly Le Point, Boulos said the Trump administration would start by focusing on a deal with Saudi Arabia — “because we know very well, and the president has said so, that once we reach an agreement with Saudi Arabia and Israel, there will be at least twelve Arab countries that will be immediately ready to follow suit.”
The Biden administration sought to broker that same deal but was thrown off course by Hamas’s October 7 onslaught and the war in Gaza that has followed. Riyadh has put negotiations on hold while raising the price of the Palestinian component of the deal from more modest steps to boost the prospects for a two-state solution to the full-fledged establishment of a Palestinian state.
Even if Riyadh backs off from the demand for Palestinian statehood when Trump is back in office, two senior Arab officials told The Times of Israel that Riyadh will not accept anything less than what the UAE received from Israel in 2020 regarding annexation.
Boulos acknowledged the Palestinian issue would be part of US negotiations with Saudi Arabia.
“I think the issue of a road map that would lead to a Palestinian state is an important part of the discussion between the United States and Saudi Arabia… But it is important to remember that Saudi Arabia is not demanding the creation of a Palestinian state today. Rather, it is asking for a vision and a road map for it — that’s all,” Boulos told Le Point.
He then pointed to Trump’s 2020 peace plan, which also envisioned the eventual establishment of a Palestinian state, indicating that the president-elect still endorses the concept.
Trump’s former Iran envoy Brian Hook, who is leading the administration’s State Department transition team, said as much in an interview last month while acknowledging that Israel’s appetite for a two-state solution has lessened since October 7.
Lessons learned
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accepted Trump’s 2020 plan with reservations after appearing alongside the president at the White House for the proposal’s unveiling, while settler leaders fumed over its inclusion of a roadmap for Palestinian statehood.
The Palestinian Authority was even quicker to reject the Trump proposal, which as a starting point for negotiations offered a map that allowed Israel to retain all of its settlements while offering the Palestinians a capital outside of Jerusalem.
A senior Palestinian official told The Times of Israel that Ramallah has “learned its lessons” regarding how to work with the Trump administration after severing ties in 2017 when he recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
Abbas has resumed contact with Trump, and the two held a “very warm” call last month, the Palestinian official said.
Asked if Abbas would be prepared to accept the Trump peace plan as a starting point for negotiations, the senior Palestinian official did not rule out the possibility.
Refusal to do so could lead the next administration to move forward with a Saudi normalization deal that offers very little to the Palestinians, while Trump heeds calls from aides to back Israeli annexation of the West Bank, one of the senior Arab officials warned.
As for whether Trump will end up prioritizing a Saudi normalization deal over supporting Israeli annexation of the West Bank, the Arab diplomat acknowledged that his guess was as good as anyone’s.
“People are trying to read into every appointment, but at the end of the day, it will be President Trump who makes the decision, and predictable he is not,” the diplomat added.
Pressed on whether the Trump administration will back annexation, Boulos told Le Point that a policy on the matter was still being crafted. “What I can tell you is that starting January 20th, there will be a very clear and very specific policy on this subject, which we will all have to respect.”
