Israeli settlers in the West Bank see Trump’s victory as a chance to advance further

On a clear day, the skyscrapers of Tel Aviv are visible from a mountain above Karnei Shomran, an Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank.

“I really feel different than in Tel Aviv,” said Sondra Baras, who has lived in Karnei Shomron for nearly 40 years. “I live in a place where my ancestors lived thousands of years ago. I do not live in the occupied territory; I live in biblical Judea and Samaria.’

For many settlers here, the border between the State of Israel and the territory it seized from Jordan in the 1967 Middle East war has been erased from their narrative.

An audio guide for visitors at the hilltop observation deck describes the West Bank as the “region of Israel” and the Palestinian city of Nablus as the place where God promised the land to the Jews.

But official annexation of the territory has so far remained a dream for settlers like Sondra, even as settlements, deemed illegal by the UN’s highest court and most other countries, mushroom every year.

Now many see an opportunity to go further with the election of Donald Trump as the next president of the United States.

“I was thrilled that Trump won,” Sondra told me. “I really want to expand sovereignty in Judea and Samaria. And I feel like that’s something that Trump could support.”

There are signs that some in his new administration may agree with her.

Mike Huckabee, appointed as Trump’s new ambassador to Israel, in an interview last year declared his support for Israel’s claims to the West Bank.

“When people use the term ‘occupied,’ I say, ‘Yes, Israel is occupying the land, but it is an occupation of the land that God gave them 3,500 years ago.’ This is their land,” he said.

Israel Ganz, head of the regional settlement council that oversees Karnei Shomron, says he has already seen a change in tone from the new Trump administration in the wake of the October 7, 2023, attacks by Hamas on Israel that sparked the Gaza war.

“Both here in Israel and in the United States, they understand that we have to exercise sovereignty here,” he told me. “It’s a process. I can’t tell you what it will be tomorrow. But in my eyes, the dream of creating two states is dead.”

US President Joe Biden has always followed the US position of supporting a future Palestinian state alongside Israel. Asked if he had heard anything else from the incoming Trump administration, Mr Gantz said: “Of course I have.”

But there are also signs that Israelis lobbying for annexation of the West Bank — some of them in cabinet positions — may be disappointed by Trump’s decisions.

Their hopes are fueled by memories of his first term as president, during which he broke with decades of US policy – and international consensus – to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and Israeli sovereignty over the occupied Golan Heights, which were seized from Syria in 1967.

But supporting the annexation of the West Bank would be a much more serious and difficult problem for Trump.

That is likely to alienate Washington’s other key ally, Saudi Arabia, complicating Trump’s chances for a broader regional deal.

It could also alienate some moderate Republicans in the US Congress, concerned about the impact on West Bank Palestinians and their future status under Israeli rule.

Settler leader Sondra Barras told me that West Bank Palestinians who don’t want to live in Israel can “go anywhere.”

Asked why they had to leave their homeland, she said: “I’m not kicking them out, but things are changing. How many wars have they started? And they lost.”

“There would be a lot of yelling and screaming if sovereignty went ahead,” she continued. “But at some point you create a fact that is irreversible.”

Shortly after Trump’s election victory last November, far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich publicly called for the annexation of Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

“2025 should be the year of sovereignty in Judea and Samaria,” he said.

Whether the new US president agrees or not, many Palestinians say that talk of formal annexation is beside the point — that Israel is already annexing territory here in practice.

One of them is Mohaib Salameh. He leads me through the ruins of his family home, built on private Palestinian land on the outskirts of Nablus. Last year, an Israeli court declared the building illegal and it was demolished.

Israel has full security and planning control over 60% of the West Bank on a temporary basis, as outlined in the Oslo peace accords three decades ago.

While settlements are expanding, building permits for Palestinian homes are almost never issued. And lawyers say that such demolitions are increasing.

“It’s all part of politics to force us to leave,” Mohaib said. “This is a policy of forced migration. What difference does it make to them (the Israelis) if I build here or not? We do not threaten them.”

Palestinians are also increasingly being forced off their land by brutal Israeli settlers – which have been sanctioned by the US and UK but largely left unchallenged by Israeli courts at home.

Activists say more than 20 Palestinian communities in the West Bank have been driven out in the past few years by increasingly violent attacks, and that settlers are now pushing into new areas outside Israel’s temporary civilian control.

Mohaib told me that no US president has ever defended the Palestinians, and that he doesn’t believe Donald Trump will either.

The next American president is considered by many to be a friend of Israel.

But he’s also a man who also likes to make deals – and avoid conflict.