There was a time when Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich would have created a deep crisis with Washington by declaring, as he did this week, that 2025 is the year in which sovereignty will be applied to Judea and Samaria. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government’s opposition to a two- state resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has already been a source of deep tension with the Biden administration, which holds fast to Palestinian statehood based on the pre-1967 lines.
Casting his eyes to a future Trump administration and skipping over the last three months of the Biden one, to which he has been a persona non grata, Smotrich declared to his faction already on Monday that he intended to start working on a sovereignty plan.
“I have no doubt that President[-elect Donald] Trump, who showed courage and determination in his decisions in [his] first term, will support the State of Israel in this move,” he stated.
Netanyahu had already hinted that he, too, believes that this is possible, with his declaration Friday that Yechiel Leiter, a resident of the West Bank settlement of Eli and a former head of the Yesha Council’s foreign desk, would be the next ambassador to the United States, once Trump reentered the White House on January 20.