Israel's Smotrich tells authorities to prepare for West Bank annexation
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has told his department to prepare for the annexation of the occupied West Bank in the wake of Donald Trump's victory in the US elections.
Speaking at a meeting of his far-right Religious Zionism party, Smotrich said that Trump's victory provided an "important opportunity" and that "the time has come to apply sovereignty" over the West Bank.
According to a statement from his office, Smotrich said he had instructed Israeli authorities overseeing West Bank settlements "to begin professional and comprehensive staff work to prepare the necessary infrastructure" for extending sovereignty.
As well as finance minister, Smotrich has a role in the defence ministry overseeing illegal settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Smotrich and other far-right politicians in Israel have hailed Trump's triumph in the presidential elections last week, hoping he will give the green light for Israel to officially annex Palestinian territory captured in 1967.
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Israel has already annexed East Jerusalem and Syria's Golan Heights in unilateral moves that have never been accepted by the international community but were recognised by Washington during Trump's first term in office.
At Monday's meeting, Smotrich said he would push the government to get the incoming Trump administration to recognise the annexation of the entire West Bank.
During Trump's 2017-2021 term as president Israel seemed primed to announce it was annexing Area C, the part of the West Bank fully controlled by the Israeli military. However, those plans never came to fruition after intense international pressure and cold feet from Washington.
Smotrich has called for an aggressively expansionist Israeli policy and last month said the country should expand "little by little" until its borders reached Damascus.
"It is written that the future of Jerusalem is to expand to Damascus," he said in an interview for the documentary, In Israel: Ministers of Chaos, citing the “greater Israel” ideology, which envisions the expansion of the state across the Middle East.
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