Hamid Khoshayand – Regional Affairs Expert

Betzalel Yoel Smotrich, the Zionist regime’s extremist Minister of Finance, announced in a public statement in the regime’s parliament: “2025 will be the year of Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank! I have ordered the director of settlement affairs in the Ministry of Defense and the Civil Administration to prepare the necessary infrastructure for exercising our sovereignty!”

Orit Sturk, the Zionist regime’s Minister of Settlements, also stated in this regard: “We are working with increased energy to exercise sovereignty over more areas in the West Bank.”

Monitoring of the Israeli political and media circles also shows that the Prime Minister of the Zionist regime intends to put the plan to annex the West Bank and impose sovereignty over it on the cabinet agenda after Donald Trump enters the White House on January 20, 2025.

Previously, the American base “Mondovis,” which is active in the field of US relations with Palestine and the Zionist regime, had claimed, citing a speech in June 2024 by the regime’s Finance Minister in front of settlement leaders, that the regime’s plan includes annexing more than 60 percent of the West Bank areas to the Occupied Territories.

The West Bank, excluding East Jerusalem, is home to 3 million Palestinians, along with about 500,000 Israelis who live in settlements that are illegal under international law.

The renewed plan to annex the West Bank to the Occupied Territories shows that Tel Aviv officials are counting on Trump’s support for advancing this idea, assuming that they will not face international and regional obstacles or challenges. Especially since Trump was one of the prominent supporters of annexing the West Bank, recognizing the Zionist regime’s sovereignty over the occupied Golan Heights, and moving the US capital to occupied Jerusalem in the previous term.

However, contrary to the Zionist authorities’ imagination, annexing the West Bank is not an easy task, given the nature and trend of developments in the region over the past year. The plan mentioned above faces serious obstacles and challenges at three levels: domestic, regional, and international.

This is while implementing such a plan is beyond the political, military, economic, and security “capabilities” of the Zionist regime, given the experience and test that the Israeli regime has had in the Gaza and Lebanon wars and has failed to achieve even its minimal goals.

The plan mentioned above faces significant obstacles both within the regime and in the West Bank in its first step. It is worth noting that in 2020, when the Israeli regime was in a much better position than it is today, it sought to annex about 30 percent of the West Bank (half of today’s area) to the Occupied Territories, which was met with strong protests and opposition from political, media, and public circles. According to the opponents, implementing such a plan would not only increase “security and military threats” but could also spark another intifada that would be far more intense than before in the West Bank.

Today, these threats still persist, with the difference that the Palestinians have more “motivation” and “power” to take anti-Zionist actions and confront the regime. It is natural that if the Zionist authorities intend to implement the annexation plan, they will not face a new intifada, which will probably be met with another “Al-Aqsa Storm” from the West Bank, especially from the new generation of fighters who are not affiliated with any organization and formation and are thinking of revenge against the regime day and night. It is also difficult to identify them.

The West Bank annexation plan has also faced a strong reaction at the regional and international levels. For example, several Arab and Islamic countries, including Qatar, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the Emirates, Turkey, and other countries, have condemned the statements of the Zionist authorities in the strongest possible tone and have warned about the “consequences” of any new Zionist adventure in the West Bank. It should be noted that the start of the implementation of such a plan will severely damage the cooperation of the Zionist regime with some Arab countries, including Egypt and Jordan, and will put them against the regime.

In addition, the plan mentioned above has also met with reactions in various European countries, including Germany, France, Belgium, England, etc. Joseph Borrell, the head of the European Union’s foreign policy, has warned that “this is a clear and obvious step towards illegal annexation.” Of course, the opposition of Western countries to the annexation of the West Bank is not due to their interest in the Palestinian people and their legitimate rights but primarily due to their interest in the Zionist regime and the fear of starting another crisis that could accelerate and facilitate the collapse of the Zionist regime in the conditions in which it has sunk into the “swamp” of Gaza and Lebanon.

In any case, advancing the plan to annex the West Bank to the Occupied Territories is unachievable in a situation where the Zionist regime, despite the full and comprehensive support of the United States and Western countries, has not yet been able to seize even a small part of Gaza or Lebanon or exert power and influence there and is in the weakest days of its life, and without American support it would not last more than a few weeks against the Palestinian resistance. Another noteworthy point is that the Islamic Resistance Front has not remained silent regarding the implementation of such plans, and they expose the regime to “devastating consequences.”

In light of the above, for the Israeli regime to seek to annex the West Bank for any reason means taking a “very dangerous” path that exposes the regime to a situation far more difficult than what it is facing in Gaza and northern occupied Palestine, the consequences of which will also affect the United States and Western countries. This issue is so dangerous that American theorist Richard Haas reacted to such claims in an interview and stated that the issue of annexing the West Bank is not in the interest of the Zionist regime and its strong relations with the United States under any circumstances.