As Israel’s current military campaign against Palestinians surpasses 14 months, President-elect Donald Trump has avoided saying whether he would allow the U.S.-supported country to annex the occupied West Bank under his incoming administration.
The Republican spoke to Time Magazine as part of the outlet’s decision to name him 2024 “Person of the Year” on Thursday. Among other issues, the former and incoming president talked about inheriting a foreign policy that includes Israel’s U.S.-funded attacks on occupied Palestinian territories and surrounding countries.
“I don’t want people killed, you know?” Trump, who has previously said Israel should “finish the problem,” told the magazine. “I don’t want people from either side killed, and that includes whether it’s Russia, Ukraine, or whether it’s the Palestinians and the Israelis and all of the, you know, different entities that we have in the Middle East.”
Time staff directly asked Trump if he wants to secure a two-state deal as outlined in his first administration’s Peace to Prosperity plan — a position that many leaders in the West, including President Joe Biden, publicly support as a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — or if he’d be willing to let Israel annex the occupied West Bank, as far-right politicians have demanded.
“I support whatever solution we can do to get peace. There are other ideas other than two-state, but I support whatever, whatever is necessary to get not just peace, [but] a lasting peace,” he said, not answering the question. “It can’t go on where every five years you end up in tragedy. There are other alternatives.”
Ahmad Gharabli/AFP via Getty Images
The Palestinian territories are made up of Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The West Bank is home to many Palestinian families, though they have long faced segregation, forced evictions and violence at the hands of both Israeli soldiers and settlers residing there in defiance of international law. Human rights groups have labeled the attacks as acts of apartheid.
For decades, Israel’s right-wing politicians have advocated for annexing the West Bank, which would amount to a human rights violation and tank any possibility of securing a two-state solution. The U.S. has largely opposed annexing the West Bank, with the Biden administration warning of consequences to settlers who attack Palestinians in the territory.
Most of the people Trump has said he will nominate to serve in his administration are extremely pro-Israel — including Pete Hegseth for defense secretary, Mike Waltz for national security adviser, Marco Rubio for secretary of state and Mike Huckabee for ambassador to Israel. Huckabee has voiced support for the settlement movement and for Israel annexing the West Bank.
“There has never been an American president that has been more helpful in securing and understanding the sovereignty of Israel,” Huckabee told Israel Army Radio in November. “I fully expect that to continue.”
Under Trump’s first term, there were 33,000 new Israeli housing units in the West Bank, almost three times as many as in former President Barack Obama’s second term. But in 2020, Trump had stopped Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from annexing the territory as part of a normalization deal between Israel and the United Arab Emirates.
Sebastian Scheiner via Associated Press
When Time staff pointed out the latter, Trump still would not say whether he’d allow Israel to annex the West Bank this time around, answering, “We’ll see what happens.”
“I want a long-lasting peace. I’m not saying that’s a very likely scenario, but I want a long-lasting peace, a peace where we don’t have an Oct. 7 in another three years. And there are numerous ways you can do it,” he said before adding, “We have some tremendous world problems that we didn’t have when I was president.”
For the past year, Israel has largely focused its attacks on Gaza, rendering the territory uninhabitable and killing at least 44,000 Palestinians — a likely undercount, according to experts — after Hamas militants killed about 1,200 people and captured 250 in an attack on Oct. 7, 2023, on southern Israel.
Since Israeli troops invaded Gaza, Palestinians in the West Bank have also experienced a rise in settler and military violence. Between Oct. 7, 2023, and Nov. 30, 2024, Israelis killed at least 770 Palestinians in the territory, according to the United Nations.
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An Axios report said Trump told Netanyahu that Israel must end its military campaign in Gaza before he takes office. The prime minister, who was also in office during the first Trump administration, has not given the incoming president any assurances about ending the war — but Netanyahu likely feels “very confident” and “knows I want it to end,” Trump told the magazine.
“Do you trust Netanyahu?” Time staff asked Trump.
He answered: “I don’t trust anybody.”