On a clear day, the skyscrapers of Tel Aviv are visible from the hills above Karnei Shomron, an Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank.
“It feels different from Tel Aviv,” said Sondra Baras, who has lived in Karnei Shomron for almost 40 years. “I live in the place where my ancestors lived thousands of years ago. I don’t live in an occupied territory; I live in biblical Judea and Samaria.”
For many settlers here, the line between the state of Israel and the territory wrested from Jordan in the 1967 Middle East war has been erased from their story.
A visitor’s audio guide 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 formal annexation of the territory has so far remained a pipe dream for settlers like Sondra, even as the settlements – which the UN Supreme Court and most other countries consider illegal – have mushroomed year after year.
Now many see an opportunity to go further, with the election of Donald Trump as the next US president.
“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 incoming administration may agree with her.
Mike Huckabee, nominated to be Trump’s new ambassador to Israel, signaled his support for Israel’s claims to the West Bank in an interview last year.
“When people use the term ‘occupied,’ I say, ‘Yes, Israel is occupying the land, but it’s an occupation of the land that God gave them 3,500 years ago. It’s their land,'” he said.
Yisrael Gantz, head of the settlement regional council overseen by Karnei Shomron, says he has already noticed a change in the tone of the new Trump administration as a result of the October 7, 2023, attack by Hamas on Israel that triggered the Gaza war.
“Both here in Israel and in the US, they understand that we have to exercise sovereignty here,” he told me. “It’s a process. I can’t tell you it will be tomorrow. But in my eyes, the dream of a two-state solution is dead.”
US President Joe Biden has always represented the US position in support of a future Palestinian state alongside Israel. Asked if he was hearing anything different from the new Trump administration, Gantz said, “Of course, yes.”
But there are also signs that Israelis lobbying for the annexation of the West Bank – some of them in government 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 American policy — and international consensus — by recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and Israeli sovereignty over the occupied Golan Heights, which was seized from Syria on January 1, 1967.
But supporting the annexation of the West Bank would be a much bigger and thornier issue for Trump.
That would likely 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 Baras told me that West Bank Palestinians who don’t want to live in Israel can “go wherever they want.”
Asked why they should leave their homeland, she said: “I’m not kicking them out, but things change. How many wars have they started? And they’ve lost.”
“If sovereignty were to go forward, there would be a lot of shouting and screaming, absolutely,” she continued. “But at some point you create a fact that is irreversible.”
Shortly after Trump’s election victory last November, Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich publicly called for the annexation of Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
“In 2025 it must be a year of sovereignty in Judea and Samaria,” he said.
Whether the new US president agrees or not, many Palestinians say the debate over formal annexation misses the point – that Israel is, in practice, already annexing territory here.
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. The building was declared illegal by an Israeli court last year and 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.
As settlements expand, permits for Palestinian homes are almost never issued. And lawyers say that such demolitions are increasing.
“This is all part of the policy to force us to leave,” Mohaib said. “It is a policy of forced migration, what does it have to do with them [Israelis] if i build here or not? We pose no threat to them.”
Palestinians are also increasingly being forced off their land by violent Israeli settlers – sanctioned by the US and the 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 entering new areas outside temporary Israeli civilian control.
Mohaib told me that no American president has ever protected the Palestinians, and 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.
