President Trump said Thursday he will not let Israel annex the occupied West Bank, an idea that has circulated among members of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.
“I will not allow Israel to annex the West Bank,” the president told reporters during an Oval Office event. “There’s been enough. It’s time to stop now.”
The president’s comments come after several media outlets reported that Mr. Trump privately assured the leaders of Arab and majority-Muslim states this week that he would push back against any Israeli effort to annex the occupied territory.
In recent days, several Western countries — including France, the United Kingdom and Canada — have moved to recognize a Palestinian state, leading Netanyahu to pledge some kind of response. Some hardline members of Netanyahu’s governing coalition have pressed the Israeli government to react by annexing much of the West Bank, though it’s unclear whether Netanyahu will seek to take that step.
Netanyahu did not immediately publicly respond to Mr. Trump’s comments.
The West Bank — which Israel has occupied since 1967 — is home to millions of Palestinians and hundreds of thousands of Israeli settlers. Since the 1990s, the territory has been split up between areas where the Palestinian Authority has some degree of control and areas fully governed by the Israeli military. Most proposals for an independent Palestinian state have involved Israel ceding control over the vast majority of the West Bank.
If Israel annexed some or all of the West Bank, formally entrenching its control over the territory, it could make forming a Palestinian state virtually impossible. The move could also upset U.S.-allied Arab countries, some of which have sought to improve their relations with Israel.
Netanyahu has ruled out allowing a Palestinian state to be formed, calling the growing pressure on the issue an “absurd prize for terrorism” last weekend.
Netanyahu’s government has faced increasing international pressure over its handling of the Israel-Hamas war, which has destroyed much of the Gaza Strip’s infrastructure and killed more than 60,000 people, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry, which does not specify how many of the dead were militants or civilians. The war began when Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages.
Mr. Trump has pressed Israel and Hamas to strike a ceasefire deal that could result in the remaining Israeli hostages being freed, but an agreement has remained elusive.
