ISRAEL’S extreme right wing finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, on Monday ordered preparations for the Israeli annexation of the occupied West Bank ahead of Donald Trump’s inauguration as US president in January, 2025.
Smotrich, who heads the far right Religious Zionism Party, also sits in the regime’s Defence Ministry where he oversees the administration of the occupied West Bank and Israeli settlements in the area.
In his statement, Smotrich said he hoped that the Trump administration would recognise Israel’s push for ‘sovereignty’ over the occupied territories, while writing on X he proclaimed: ‘2025: the year of sovereignty in Judea and Samaria’ – the biblical names Zionists use when referring to the occupied West Bank.
At a meeting of his far-right faction in Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government, Smotrich welcomed Trump’s victory and said he had instructed the Defence Ministry’s Settlement Directorate and Civil Administration to lay groundwork for annexation.
He said: ‘I have no doubt that president Trump, who showed courage and determination in his decisions during his first term, will support the State of Israel in this move.’ This was a reference to Trump recognising Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in 2017, overturning decades of US policy and in defiance of international law.
When president, Trump supported policies that allowed for the continued expansion of Israeli settlements designated as illegal by the United Nations.
Smotrich has made no secret of the real aim of the extreme Zionists who occupy leading positions in the Israeli government. At a conference in Paris last March, he displayed a map of ‘Greater Israel’ showing the occupied West Bank and Jordan as part of the self-proclaimed Jewish State.
Last month, Smotrich told interviewers that his aim was not just to dominate Palestinian territories but that they should encompass taking over Syria, stating: ‘It is written that the future of Jerusalem is to expand to Damascus.’
The brutal reality for the Zionists, however, is that they have been unable to successfully crush the resistance of Palestinians in Gaza, the occupied West Bank or make anything other than temporary advances on the ground in Lebanon.
The Zionist war to drive Palestinians from their land though starvation and genocide has failed completely.
In Lebanon, Hezbollah is forcing Israeli ground troops to retreat while at the weekend Israeli media reported that ground invasions of Lebanon have dramatically decreased and Israeli forces are pulling out, with military leaders fearing further heavy losses if they continue.
Smotrich and Netanyahu are banking on Trump to ride to the rescue of the beleaguered Zionist state that is determined to annex the occupied West Bank, drive every Palestinian from Gaza and crush the resistance of Arab workers and youth in an attempt to dominate the entire Middle East on behalf of US imperialism.
With Israel too weak to even occupy a few villages in Lebanese territory, the direct intervention of US troops will be required by the Trump administration to save the Zionist regime from defeat and collapse.
By implementing these annexation proposals, the plan is to create a situation on the ground before Trump assumes the presidency that opens the way for imperialist war across the Middle East.
The overwhelming mass of workers and youth across the US, UK and Europe stand with the Palestinian revolution and now is the time to put that support into action.
Millions of workers across the world will not stand by and watch Palestinians being subjected to a genocidal war of extermination while US imperialism and its allies in the UK prepare for a direct intervention to prop up its Zionist puppet regime.
The working class must demand and force their trade union leaders to call general strikes to bring down their governments that support and are complicit in the Israeli murder-machine.
The trade union leaders in the UK who refuse to lift a finger for the Palestinian people must be made to call a Special Congress of the TUC to immediately call a general strike to bring down the Starmer Labour government and its ‘cast iron’ support for Israel, replacing it with a workers’ government that will give all support to establishing the independent state of Palestine where workers of all nationalities and religions can live in peace.
