Right-wing figures in Israel rejected US President Donald Trump’s declaration Thursday that Israeli annexation of the West Bank is “not going to happen,” and called on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to take the step anyway.
The premier’s allies, many of whom have long supported annexing the West Bank, have pushed him in recent weeks to declare Israeli sovereignty over parts of the territory as a response to the wave of Western nations announcing their recognition of a Palestinian state.
“The Jewish people’s sovereignty over the Jewish homeland does not depend on any external source. Even one as loving and friendly as can be,” MK Zvi Sukkot, of the far-right Religious Zionism party, wrote on X, without mentioning Trump by name.
“Faced with European countries’ insane recognition of a Palestinian terror state, we must apply sovereignty [over the West Bank] already during this term,” he added.
Likud MK Dan Ilouz said the matter “is solely the decision of the Jewish people.”
“We love and appreciate President Trump for standing alongside Israel over the years,” Ilouz tweeted. “But the State of Israel is a sovereign country.”
“No international figure, even a great and beloved friend, can dictate to us how to relate to our land,” he said.
MK Avi Maoz, the only lawmaker in the Knesset from the far-right, anti-gay Noam party, said that “with all due respect” to the US, “the decision to apply sovereignty lies with the Israeli government and Knesset.”
Yossi Dagan, who heads the Samaria Regional Council of settlements in the northern West Bank, said Friday that “a sympathetic American administration isn’t one that will apply sovereignty or build in place of us, it’s an administration that we can manage our agreements and manage our disagreements with.”
Dagan insisted that, after the Hamas terror group’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, the nation will not give up on annexing the West Bank, in order to prevent a Palestinian state that he has said would pose an existential threat to the Jewish state.
“Only sovereignty over all the open areas and settlements will prevent a terror state in the heart of Israel,” Dagan said.
Most proposals for West Bank annexation — including those that would see Israel claim a large majority of the territory’s area and prevent any contiguous Palestinian state — avoid major Palestinian population centers.
“The responsibility is Netanyahu’s. He is prime minister, we elected him, and he should declare at the UN: This is our land, I will do what is critical for Israel’s continued existence after October 7, and apply full sovereignty to Judea and Samaria,” Dagan said, using a Biblical term for the West Bank.
“The majority of the nation expects this, the majority of the nation will not give up on this,” Dagan said.
Trump told reporters at the White House on Thursday that “I will not allow Israel to annex the West Bank. I will not allow it. It’s not going to happen.”
He made the comments as Netanyahu was arriving in New York to deliver an address to the United Nations, ahead of a meeting slated for next week between the leaders at the White House.
A senior Israeli official told The Times of Israel earlier this week that the Trump administration privately cautioned Israel against annexing the West Bank in response to the recent decisions by Western countries to recognize Palestinian statehood.
However, Jerusalem did not feel that the warning marked “an end to the discussion,” and Netanyahu planned to discuss the matter with Trump during their meeting next week, the Israeli official said.
Without US support, Israel is much less likely to go ahead with the move, which would have diminished significance without backing from the world’s leading superpower and would spark massive international backlash.