Trump’s picks spur renewed push for West Bank annexation in Israel

Donald Trump’s election victory has triggered a renewed push by some in Israel’s right-wing government to annex the occupied West Bank, an idea that is seen as illegal by most of the international community and could threaten Israel’s relations with its Arab allies.

On Wednesday, Trump’s nominee for U.S. ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, said in an interview with Israel’s Army Radio that “of course” annexation of the West Bank is possible in the next administration but the policy hasn’t been set.

It was the first signal that the new American administration might be open to the idea, which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pushed for during the first Trump administration. As part of the Abraham Accords of 2020 with Arab countries such as the United Arab Emirates, Netanyahu promised to take annexation off the table. Since Trump’s election, far-right ministers and leaders of settlement councils in the West Bank have said it is time to renew the push.

“Trump’s victory brings with it an important opportunity for the State of Israel,” far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said Monday. “2025 [is] the year of sovereignty in Judea and Samaria,” he added, using the term Israel applies to the West Bank.

Foreign Minister Gideon Saar took a less firm position, saying Monday that the possibility of annexation would need to be discussed with Washington.

Huckabee, a former Arkansas governor who reflects the views of pro-Israel evangelical Christians, is among several backers of Israel whom Trump has said will join his administration. They include Rep. Elise Stefanik, an outspoken critic of universities’ handling of pro-Palestinian campus protests. Trump also said Steve Witkoff, a real-estate investor, would be his Middle East envoy and described him as “an unrelenting Voice for PEACE.” Witkoff has expressed support for Israel and Netanyahu on X.

Huckabee has for years expressed support for Israeli settlements in the West Bank. In 2017, he said there was no such thing as the West Bank and that the real term for the territory was Judea and Samaria.

Still, the U.S. ambassador typically doesn’t dictate strategy so Huckabee’s position isn’t a sure sign that Trump would support such a move. In his first term, Trump opposed Israeli annexation. Instead, he pushed a peace plan that included a Palestinian state. The proposal was rejected by the Palestinian leadership because it fell far below their hopes for a state of their own.

Jason Greenblatt, White House envoy to the Middle East in the previous Trump administration, said he believed the discussion of annexation would take place only as an extension of widened Abraham Accords or Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.

“Context is everything,” he said. “My advice to those ministers pushing for this now is for them to focus on and work closely with Prime Minister Netanyahu on the immediate, pressing, urgent issues Israel is facing.”

The U.A.E. condemned the recent comments by Smotrich, calling them provocative and an obstacle to regional peace and stability, in a statement Tuesday.

Arab states and European countries have said a unilateral move to annex the territory would permanently dash hopes for the creation of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel.

Still, the U.A.E. is unlikely to reverse course on deepening ties with Israel, which have quietly expanded over the past year even as Israel has waged war in Gaza and Lebanon.

At an event last year marking the three-year anniversary of the normalization deal, U.A.E. Ambassador to Washington Yousef Al Otaiba said Israeli policies in the West Bank were making a two-state solution more difficult to achieve. “Our deal was based on a certain time period and that time period is almost done, and so we have no ability to leverage decisions that are made outside of the period that the Abraham Accords was based on,” he said.

Annexation could also threaten progress on normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, which has said a deal is contingent on a pathway toward a Palestinian state.

The incoming Republican president and his administration won’t want to risk the priorities of sealing a Saudi-Israeli deal and fostering a regional coalition against Iran to support West Bank annexation, said Mark Dubowitz, chief executive of the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a think tank that has argued for a tough policy on Iran and its proxies.

“I have yet to hear anyone say a priority is supporting annexation,” he said. “Whatever designs Smotrich has on the West Bank under a new administration is likely to be of secondary importance to broader Arab-Israeli normalization as well as the administration’s laserlike focus on countering Iran.”

Annexation can mean different things. Netanyahu in the past has advocated for annexing the parts of the territory where Israeli settlements are located, as well as the Jordan Valley, which borders Jordan. But other calls for annexation refer to the area where Israel already has full military control, including Israeli settlements. Far-right politicians have called for Israel to annex the entire territory and give Palestinians some form of autonomy but not Israeli citizenship.

Many in Israel oppose annexation, arguing that it would eventually lead to either one state between Israelis and Palestinians or an apartheid state where Palestinians are discriminated against and disenfranchised.

Since 2015, Netanyahu has led governments that have had majority support for West Bank annexation, but he still hasn’t advanced it in Israel’s legislature, noted Yaakov Katz, a senior fellow at the Jerusalem-based Jewish People Policy Institute.

He said Netanyahu could be dangling the threat of annexation as leverage for talks with Saudi Arabia.

“It is hard to rule out the possibility that this is a tactic,” Katz said.

Israel is already facing broad international condemnation over its handling of wars against militants in Gaza and the Lebanese militia Hezbollah, and violence by Israeli settlers against Palestinians in the West Bank. A move toward West Bank annexation could further isolate Israel in international forums and further inflame Palestinian and Arab anger toward Israel.

Smotrich, who is also a minister in Israel’s Defense Ministry, which controls civil affairs in the West Bank, said he had directed the ministry to prepare for the application of Israeli sovereignty in the West Bank. Over the past two years, he has led a quiet reshaping of the West Bank in favor of settlements.

While much of the world considers the West Bank occupied territory, Israel argues it is disputed territory and its final status must be negotiated over.

Huckabee said on Army Radio on Wednesday that Trump proved his pro-Israel bona fides in his first term by recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, moving the U.S. Embassy there and recognizing Israeli sovereignty of the Golan Heights, which Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 Mideast war.

“He has already demonstrated in his first term that there has never been an American president that has been more helpful in securing an understanding of the sovereignty of Israel,” Huckabee said of Trump. “I fully expect that will continue.”

Stephen Kalin contributed to this article.

Write to Dov Lieber at dov.lieber@wsj.com