America First or Annexation First? Party-Drowning Israeli Ministers Have Big Plans for Trump

by Allison Kaplan Sommer,

Even before the president-elect chose Mike Huckabee as his envoy to Israel, far-right minister Bezalel Smotrich and other post-election party-goers in Israel were openly talking about Trump’s second term as an opportunity to “take the land away” from the Palestinians for good.

Far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the Knesset, early 2024. Noam Revkin-Fenton

The ecstatic celebrations of the Israeli far right over Donald Trump’s election as US president seem to be a never-ending party; leaders appear to be already drunk on power and free from what they see as the constraints of the Biden administration.

It is in this context that the recent words of far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich should be read. On Monday, before a meeting of his Religious Zionism party, he declared that “2025 is the year of sovereignty in Judea and Samaria.”

Referring to the Palestinians – as a whole – Smotrich said: “The new Nazis must pay a price in the form of land that will be permanently taken from them, whether in Gaza or in Judea and Samaria.”

A full day before Trump announced that he had chosen former Gov. Mike Huckabee — a Greater Israel advocate with close ties to Israeli settlers — as his ambassador to Israel, Smotrich announced that he believes Trump’s return to the White House means Netanyahu’s government can finish what it started during the Republican president’s first term: annexing the West Bank.

Addressing his party, Smotrich said that during Trump’s first presidency, “we were one step away from applying sovereignty over the settlements in Judea and Samaria, and now is the time to do it.”

Smotrich said he had instructed the Defense Ministry’s settlement administration division — of which he is also a minister — and the IDF Civil Administration in the West Bank to prepare the infrastructure needed to apply Israeli sovereignty in the West Bank.

As usual, he and his allies can’t control the urge to say out loud what should remain confidential.

Less than a month ago, Smotrich – along with other high-level government figures such as far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, Negev and Galilee Development Minister Yitzhak Wasserlauf, and a number of Knesset members – attended the “Preparing to Resettle Gaza” conference. They forced Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, once again, to deny that – despite all evidence to the contrary – Jewish settlement in Gaza is on the cards.

Will Netanyahu again distance himself from Smotrich’s annexation statement? Much depends on how Trump reacts – and so far his Middle East appointments seem to indicate that he agrees with Smotrich.

Besides, the West Bank is not Gaza. Netanyahu’s government’s coalition agreement begins with a declaration that the Jewish people have a “natural right” to the entire Land of Israel and includes a commitment to pursue policies under which the West Bank will be annexed. Netanyahu himself has said he wants to annex much, if not all, of the West Bank.

But he may still have to backtrack. Trump and Netanyahu have a history of disagreements over the issue of West Bank annexation. It was Netanyahu, with the help of then-US Ambassador David Friedman, who tried to turn the “deal of the century” into an annexation plan that sparked the great clash between the two leaders in 2020.

In the end, the sour lemons of their conflict were transformed into pleasant lemonade when the Abraham Accords were successfully pitched to Netanyahu as compensation for abandoning his plan to annex parts of the West Bank, but not without some ugly clashes. In one such incident, Netanyahu was told point-blank by Trump aides: “The President doesn’t like you very much these days.”

Trump’s son-in-law and Middle East adviser Jared Kushner also shouted “go away” at Ron Dermer, then Israel’s ambassador to the US and now Netanyahu’s minister of strategic affairs, and kicked him out of his office.

Given this track record, Smotrich’s performance less than a week before the election looks set to backfire. Even the most right-wing, pro-Israel elements of Trump world—particularly Trump himself and Kushner—will not be pleased with the actions of people like Smotrich if they get in the way of a more important Trump goal: the successful normalization of diplomatic relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel after Biden’s failure. As much as Netanyahu wants to continue to pander to groups to his right, he has far more to lose by alienating Trump than Biden.

You never know what will happen with an ever-evolving Trump. Only time will tell if and when Smotrich—and other post-election revelers in Israel—will have to sober up.