The appointment of several staunchly pro-Israel figures to top positions in the incoming Trump administration has emboldened rightwing settlers in the occupied West Bank who believe they now have a “dream team” in Washington that will provide unprecedented support for their controversial agenda.
Extremist Israeli nationalists view cabinet picks like incoming Secretary of State Marco Rubio, UN Ambassador nominee Elise Stefanik, and probable Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth as outspoken advocates for expanding Jewish settlements and annexing Palestinian territories – moves that would sound the death knell for the long-stalled two-state solution.
“Israel could never have asked for anything more than this,” exulted Daniel Luria, a spokesman for Ateret Cohanim, a radical settler organization working to “Judaize” East Jerusalem by evicting Palestinian families. “We’ve got a very unique situation now…to really have literally a new Middle East, and readjust everything.”
Emboldened by Trump’s victory
In the weeks since the US election, Israeli authorities have already accelerated home demolitions in Palestinian neighborhoods in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. According to UN figures, 25 Palestinian structures were knocked down just last week.
Fakhri Abu Diab, a 62-year old Palestinian activist, said Israeli bulldozers returned on election day to destroy more of his family’s home in East Jerusalem – a move he sees as directly enabled by Trump’s victory.
“Israel has wanted to demolish here for 20 years and are now seizing the opportunity,” Abu Diab lamented as he sifted through the rubble. “With Trump in power there is nothing to restrain Israel.”
The Jerusalem municipality claims the Palestinian homes were built illegally. But Israeli rights groups argue the demolitions are actually meant to make way for Jewish settlers and further fragment Palestinian neighborhoods in the occupied eastern part of the city.
Unprecedented support from Washington
While every US administration in recent decades has officially opposed Israeli settlements, Trump broke with that policy during his first term by recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, moving the US embassy there, and declaring the occupied Golan Heights as sovereign Israeli territory.
Now, settler leaders believe Trump’s new cabinet will go even further in backing their maximalist vision.
Incoming Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said he opposes any ceasefire with the “vicious animals” of Hamas and believes Israel has a right to destroy “every element” of the group. UN Ambassador pick Elise Stefanik has branded the UN a “cesspool of antisemitism” for criticizing Israel’s actions in Gaza.
The likely next Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and presumptive Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, both evangelical Christians, have endorsed Israeli sovereignty over the entire West Bank, which they exclusively refer to by the biblical names of “Judea and Samaria.”
“There’s no such thing as an occupation,” Huckabee has declared of the West Bank, rejecting the international legal consensus. In his view, Jewish settlements “are communities, they’re neighborhoods, they’re cities.”
Calls for annexation amid Gaza war
The hawkish shift in Washington comes as Israel’s most rightwing government ever, led by returning Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is already signaling its intention to annex all or parts of the West Bank.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, himself a settler and outspoken annexationist, recently proclaimed that 2025 would be “the year of sovereignty in Judea and Samaria.” Several other Israeli ministers also attended a recent conference calling for restored Jewish settlement in Gaza.
These incendiary moves have been further emboldened by the ongoing war in Gaza, which followed Hamas militants firing rockets into Israel on October 7, killing over 1,200 mostly civilians. Israel’s retaliatory bombardment and ground invasion of the besieged coastal enclave has claimed over 43,000 lives, the vast majority of them civilians as well.
Rather than reining in Israel’s most aggressive impulses, Trump’s emerging foreign policy team seems poised to offer a blank check of support, no matter how many Palestinian homes are bulldozed or international laws are violated in pursuit of an expanded “Greater Israel.”
With evangelical Christian nationalist ideology fusing with Jewish fundamentalism both in the US and Israel, the region appears on a collision course with a one-state reality of permanent occupation and unequal rights for Palestinians – an “apartheid” outcome that seems ever more difficult to avoid.
As Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat recently warned European officials in a desperate plea for outside pressure: “If the Trump Administration doesn’t change course, I believe [the year] 2025 will be the year of the burial of the two-state solution and that of the Palestinian National Authority. Israel will take over.”
