- Title: Israeli settlers set sights on Trump support for full control of West Bank
- Date: 23rd November 2024
- Summary: SHILO, WEST BANK (NOVEMBER 13, 2024) (REUTERS) (SOUNDBITE) (English) JEWISH SETTLER ACTIVIST LIVING IN SHILO SETTLEMENT, YISRAEL MEDAD, SAYING: "And what I'm looking for is a situation where we become people-oriented, where we understand that the only way out of this situation, of this century-long conflict, is together. Because otherwise both populations will suffer and t
- Embargoed: 7th December 2024 10:01
- Keywords: israel netanyahu palestinians settlements settlers trump two state solution west bank
- Location: SHILO, NEVE DANIEL AND BINYAMIN COUNCIL, WEST BANK/JERUSALEM
- City: SHILO, NEVE DANIEL AND BINYAMIN COUNCIL, WEST BANK/JERUSALEM
- Country: Palestinian Occupied Territory
- Topics: Conflicts/War/Peace,Middle East
- Reuters ID: LVA008054218112024RP1
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text: After a record expansion of Israeli settlement activity, some settler advocates in the occupied West Bank are looking to Donald Trump to fulfil a dream of imposing sovereignty over the area seen by Palestinians as the heart of a future state.
Settlers have celebrated Trump's nomination of a clutch of officials known for pro-Israel views, among them ambassador Mike Huckabee, an evangelical Christian who has said the West Bank is not under occupation and prefers the term "communities" to "settlements."
Yisrael Medad, an activist and writer who supports Israel absorbing the West Bank, spoke to Reuters about Trump's victory in the house he has lived in for more than four decades in the West Bank settlement of Shilo. "We have high hopes. We're even buoyant to a certain extent," Medad said.
Together with the neighbouring settlement of Eli, Shilo sits near the centre of the West Bank, an hour from Jerusalem along Route 60, a smooth motorway that contrasts sharply with the potholed roads that connect the area's Palestinian cities.
Many in Israel call the West Bank by the old biblical names for the area - Judea and Samaria, and for supporters of Jewish settlements, the Biblical connection is what gives them the right to be there. Most countries consider the area as occupied territory and deem the settlements illegal under international law, a position upheld by the U.N's top court in July.
"I would hope that the American administration would have more of an understanding of our historical rights, our legal rights, " said Eliana Passentin, resident of the settlement of Eli, as she toured the archeological site of 'Ancient Shilo', revered as the site of the tabernacle set up by the ancient Israelites after they returned from exile in Egypt and kept there for 300 years.
Shilo has been a popular stop for visiting U.S. politicians, including both Huckabee and Pete Hegseth, Trump's nominee for Secretary of Defense.
Israel Ganz, the head of the Yesha Council, an umbrella group of West Bank Jewish municipalities, led a prayer session for a Trump victory in the ruins of an old Byzantine basilica in Shilo before the Nov. 5 election.
Ganz said in an interview to Reuters that he hoped the Trump administration would "let" Israel's government move ahead.
A series of steps have been taken to consolidate Israel's position in the West Bank since Netanyahu's government came to power. Many functions relating to settlements previously handled by the military have been handed to the Settlement Administration, a civilian body answerable directly to Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, one of the most prominent pro-settler ministers in the government.
Settlement construction in the West Bank reached record levels in 2023. Since the war started in Gaza last October, a spate of new roads and ground works have changed the appearance of hillsides across the area visibly.
At the same time, violence by Jewish settlers against Palestinians in the West Bank has spiralled, including around Shilo, drawing international condemnation and U.S. and European sanctions against individuals deemed to have taken a prominent part.
The U.S. president-elect has not revealed his plans for the region. It is by no means certain Trump will give backing to a move that puts at risk Washington's strategic ambition of a wider deal under the Abraham Accords to normalize Israel's ties with Saudi Arabia, which, like most countries in the world, rejects Israeli sovereignty in the West Bank.
Annexation would bury any hope of a two-state solution that creates an independent Palestine and also complicate efforts to resolve more than a year of war in Gaza that has spilled over into neighbouring Lebanon.
Around 750,000 Palestinians were displaced with the creation of Israel in 1948, according to U.N. estimates. The West Bank is claimed by Palestinians as the nucleus of a future independent state, along with the Mediterranean enclave of Gaza to the south.
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