Israel Ganz, chairman of the Yesha settlers council and chairman of the Mateh Binyamin District Council, poses for a portrait holding a bottle of wine bearing the name of US President-elect Donald Trump at the Shaar Binyamin Industrial Park in the West Bank on Monday. November 11, 2024. (Ohad Zwigenberg/AP)

BEIT EL, West Bank — As Donald Trump’s victory in last week’s U.S. election became apparent, advocates for Jewish settlement in the West Bank popped bottles of champagne and danced to the Bee Gees at a winery in the heart of the occupied territory, according to a post on Instagram. . The winery said it will release a special red edition bearing the president-elect’s name.

Settlement supporters believe they have plenty of reason to celebrate. Not only did the expansion of housing for Jews in the West Bank exceed previous records during Trump’s first term, but his administration has also moved to support Israel’s territorial claims, including recognizing Jerusalem as the capital and moving the U.S. Embassy there, and recognizing Israel’s territorial claims. took unprecedented steps. Annexation of the Golan Heights.

This time, as Israel drifts into a multi-front war, settlement advocates believe Trump’s history of fervent support could translate into their biggest goal: Israel’s annexation of the West Bank. Some are even trying to resettle Gaza under the Trump administration.

“Hopefully, 2025 will be the year of sovereignty in Judea and Samaria,” Israeli Finance Minister and ardent advocate of settlers Bezalel Smotrich said on Monday, referring to the West Bank by its biblical name in comments that sparked international uproar. He said he would have the government lobby the Trump administration on the idea.

Israel captured the West Bank, as well as east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, in the 1967 Middle East war. Palestinians want these regions to become the state they hope for in the future. In a move unrecognized by most of the international community, Israel annexed East Jerusalem and withdrew its settlers and soldiers from the Gaza Strip, where it had waged a war against Hamas in 2005.

Settlement expansion in the West Bank ballooned during Israel’s open-ended occupation; More than half a million Israelis live in approximately 130 settlements and dozens of unauthorized outposts. The Western-backed Palestinian Authority administers semi-autonomous areas of the West Bank that are home to the majority of the Palestinian population.

During his first term as president, Trump abandoned decades-long U.S. opposition to settlements. He proposed a Middle East plan that would allow Israel to keep it all. The Israeli ambassador was a staunch advocate of settlements and an opponent of Palestinian statehood.

But Trump has also taken steps to keep some settler supporters wary. The Middle East plan left room for a Palestinian state, although critics said it was an unrealistic vision. Normalization agreements brokered by Trump between Israel and Arab countries also prevented the country from annexing the West Bank.

Although he has not publicly stated his policy for a second term, his first administration, including the Israeli and UN ambassadors, are deeply pro-Israel, making it likely that he will not stand in the way of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right. The government is advancing settlement construction.

“There has never been an American president who has been so helpful in understanding Israel’s sovereignty,” Trump’s nominee for ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, told Israeli Army Radio when asked about the possibility of annexing the West Bank. “I fully expect this to continue.”

A spokesman for Netanyahu declined to say whether the Israeli leader would pursue annexation during Trump’s presidency. But Netanyahu appointed American-born, hard-line settlement activist Yechiel Leiter as ambassador to Washington.

Human rights groups currently claim that Israel is enforcing apartheid in the West Bank and that annexation would subject Israel to similar accusations if it does not grant equal rights to Palestinians. Israel opposes granting citizenship to Palestinians in the West Bank, arguing that this would destroy Israel’s Jewish character.

Regardless of whether annexation comes, settler advocates foresee unfettered expansion under a Trump administration and an Israeli government with settler leaders and supporters in key positions. They see a presidency in which they can further consolidate their presence in the West Bank with the proliferation of housing, roads and industrial zones.

“I’m sure things will be much easier with President Trump because he supports the state of Israel,” said Israel Ganz, president of the settler lobby group Yesha Council.

Israeli settlement expansion continued to varying degrees under many American administrations. During Trump’s term, Israel sold nearly 33,000 homes, nearly three times as many as during President Barack Obama’s second term, according to the anti-settlement watchdog group Peace Now.

The numbers dropped significantly in the first two years of the Biden administration, but rose again in 2023, shortly after the establishment of Israel’s current far-right government, and have increased throughout the war.

The Biden administration has imposed sanctions on Jewish settlers suspected of inciting violence against Palestinians; This approach is likely to end in the Trump era.

In the West Bank, billboards advertise new settlements and invite passers-by to build homes there. A new neighborhood in Beit El, next to Ramallah, the administrative center of Palestine, boasts not the red-roofed, single-family houses that have become icons of the settler movement, but six similar high-rise apartment buildings that can accommodate hundreds of people. any Israeli suburb.

Palestinians view settlements as a violation of international law and an obstacle to peace, a view that has broad international support. Israel sees the West Bank as the historical and biblical heart of the Jewish people and says any division must be agreed upon in negotiations. Peace talks have been moribund for more than a decade, and support for a Palestinian state has waned among Israelis following Hamas attacks on October 7, 2023, which sparked the war.

Palestinian official Wasel Abu Yusuf said that Trump has not yet clarified his position and it is not known whether he will support Israel’s annexation.

Anti-settlement researcher and activist Dror Etkes said that during the first Trump administration there was a “very rapid increase” in West Bank outpost farms that displaced entire Palestinian communities from huge tracts of land, as did infrastructure projects that allowed settlement expansion. Like roads and water systems.

Etkes said that in the next four years “we can assume that we will see more significant steps of de facto annexation, maybe even formal annexation.”

Some settler advocates, such as Daniella Weiss, think Trump will not pressure Netanyahu to quickly withdraw his troops from Gaza, which would create an opening for resettlement. This idea would not sit well with other American administrations, and much of the international community would oppose it.

A similar strategy in the early years of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank led to the proliferation of settlements there. Two of Netanyahu’s key ruling partners also support resettlement in Gaza, but the Israeli leader says it is “unrealistic.”

Yair Sheleg, a research fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem who studies the settler movement, said Trump is “undecided” and may approach the settlement initiative less favorably in his expected effort to normalize ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia. many hopes.

But he still said the general feeling among settler advocates is that “Trump understands the needs of the settlement enterprise.”