Title: Unnerved by Biden's Sanctions, Israeli Settler Leaders Are Excited About Trump's Victory - Israel News - Haaretz.com
What the Trump administration means for Israel.
Daniella Weiss is gaslighting below, as she knows damned well that Trump will continue with his "tradition" and give the Settler's all they want, plus more if there's anything left (Jordan?), now that he doesn't have to face reelection.
Settler leaders believe that Donald Trump's election is good news for them, especially regarding the future of the Biden administration's sanctions regime and U.S. obstacles against building settlements in Gaza.
The settler chiefs are pinning their hopes on Trump's previous term, which saw a surge in building permits in settlements and in the construction of unauthorized outposts. There were also policy changes, such as the declaration that the settlements are legal.
Another encouraging factor for the settlers is the close relationship of some settler leaders with people in the first Trump administration and with leaders in the American evangelical community.
Yossi Dagan, the head of the Samaria Regional Council in the northern West Bank, played an active role in trying to increase the American-Israeli turnout for Trump. In the weeks before Tuesday's election, he initiated a project called Jvote in which American citizens living in Israel who were seen as likely Trump supporters were encouraged to vote.
"A great burden has been lifted, a great weight," Dagan told Haaretz on Wednesday. "The American pressure affected everything regarding security and the settlements. I believe that this pressure will stop or weaken. It's still too early to know what will change, but it's clear that the Israeli government won't be able to come and say that there is American pressure."
Samaria Regional Council head Yossi Dagan, left, and David Friedman at the launch of the former U.S. ambassador's book last week.Credit: Samaria Regional Council
Dagan said that this pressure was expressed in restrictions on the army's operations in Gaza, Lebanon and the West Bank, as well as in an expectation that a Palestinian state would be established. Annexation – or sovereignty, to use Dagan's term – will be back on the table, he said. Asked whether he believes that Trump's victory will buoy any Israeli efforts to build settlements in Gaza, he said the absence of political pressure was bound to help.
"Our expectation of the U.S. government is that it will go along with what Israel wants," Dagan said. "Eventually, the sanctions [on settlers] come from the United States, just as at the end of the Obama era, the labeling of products came from the United States," he said, referring to Israeli products produced in the settlements.
As part of its sanctions regime, the Biden administration has frozen the U.S. assets of settlers and organizations implicated in violence against Palestinian civilians in the West Bank. The sanctions resulted in the freezing of the Israeli bank accounts of the people penalized.
Asked whether he expects this regime to end, Dagan replied: "Of course I have an expectation that it will be lifted." He said he expects the Trump administration to instead impose sanctions on people such as Jibril Rajoub, a senior Fatah official.
Dagan is also a key figure because of his close ties to American evangelical leaders and Trump associates in recent years. On Monday, he and Tony Perkins, an evangelical leader and president of the conservative advocacy group the Family Research Council, published an op-ed in the council's media outlet, The Washington Stand. Perkins – The Stand's executive editor – and Dagan argued against the policy of the Biden-Harris administration and urged readers to vote in the election.
Dagan even traveled around the United States recently; he said at a parlor meeting in Pennsylvania: "If people in the States want to help the pioneers who live and build in Judea and Samaria, they must vote for Trump."
Among the most vocal supporters of the settlements in the previous Trump administration was Trump's ambassador to Israel, David Friedman. In the West Bank settlement of Nofim a week ago, Friedman launched the Hebrew edition of his new book, "One Jewish State: The Last, Best Hope to Resolve the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict."
Settler leader Daniella Weiss at a conference last month envisioning the building of settlements in Gaza. "There is an expectation that Trump will put the brakes on less," she says.Credit: Tomer Appelbaum
Six cabinet members attended: Defense Minister Israel Katz (then foreign minister), Economy Minister Nir Barkat, Energy Minister Eli Cohen, Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli, National Missions Minister Orit Strock and Science Minister Gila Gamliel. "We hope that one day, with God's help, and with your help, Israel will have complete sovereignty over all of its biblical homeland," Friedman says in a promotional video for the book.
On Wednesday, after Trump's victory was announced, the head of the Yesha Council of settlements and of the Mateh Binyamin Regional Council, Israel Ganz, tweeted: "Time for sovereignty! One strong Trump, One Jewish state." On Tuesday morning, Ganz even led a service in the settlement of Shiloh featuring a prayer for success in the U.S. election.
In the first Trump administration, two events were particularly important for the settlers; the first was Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's November 2019 announcement that the United States did not consider Israel's West Bank settlements a violation of international law.
At a conference on the subject held by Israel's Kohelet Policy Forum a few weeks later that included Friedman, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then-Defense Minister Naftali Bennett, Pompeo thanked Kohelet for its support. This past February, the Biden administration rescinded the declaration.
The second key event for the settlers was the "deal of the century," an American plan for an agreement that included the establishment of a demilitarized Palestinian state and the application of Israeli sovereignty to the settlements, some of which would remain as enclaves in the new Palestinian state.
While this won the support of some settlers, others opposed it strongly. This group included the Yesha Council chief at the time, David Elhayani, who told Haaretz at the time that the plan proved that Trump was "not a friend of the State of Israel."
Another key figure in the settlements who was left wary by the experience is Daniella Weiss, the Nahala movement leader who now is best known as the head of the nascent Gaza settlement project.
Settler leader Benzi Gopstein at the conference.Credit: Tomer Appelbaum
"We underwent a very difficult experience with the Trump plan, and I worked very hard to ensure that it wouldn't be accepted," Weiss told Haaretz on Wednesday. "It included 30 percent [of the West Bank] for the Jews but 70 percent for a Palestinian state. People on the right mainly saw the 30 percent for the Jews, but I saw the 70 percent for the Palestinian state. So this is constantly gnawing at me; I can't let this worry go," she said.
Still, Weiss expects a positive influence on the possibility of settling in Gaza. "There is an expectation that Trump will put the brakes on less, absolutely," she said, though she added that she puts most of her energy into lobbying efforts in Israel.
"I think it depends less on Trump and more on Israel and the pressure by the right overall. I'm not only talking about Likud but about all the political parties, and I'm working hard at this."
In this regard, she characterizes the accomplishment at the local level as "like we dreamed and beyond what we imagined was realistic."
Weiss has another expectation regarding a shift in Washington's position on a Palestinian state. "I hope that Trump will take that off the agenda entirely," she said, though she stressed her fears that Trump is an unpredictable leader.
The president-elect's contribution to the settlements in his previous term is also clear in the numbers. According to Peace Now's 2020 report "Greenlighting De Facto Annexation," released toward the end of Trump's term: "The number of plans promoted in the settlements increased 2.5 times compared to the previous four years."
According to the group, the number of housing tenders in the settlements doubled, at least 31 new outposts were established (compared with nine the previous four years), and plans that were previously considered taboo were promoted, including a blueprint for construction in Hebron and the E1 area east of Jerusalem.
"In Trump's first term, the settlers wanted to take three main issues off the table," said Hagit Ofran, head of Peace Now's settlement watch team. "The first was the [Palestinian] refugees, so Trump started to talk about halting donations to UNRWA. The second was the settlements, with the Trump plan basically being an annexation plan. The last one was Jerusalem, and Trump moved the embassy there."
Ofran says Trump's election will strengthen new settler plans that are already cropping up, including the expulsion of communities in the West Bank and the building of settlements in Gaza.
"I predict that we'll see settlement in northern Gaza already in the next few weeks," she said. "We can also guess that the moves initiated by the Biden administration to try to rein in Israel – by sanctions, for example – will be stopped or canceled."
