Trump will let us annex West Bank, says Israel's settler leader
Israel Ganz exudes the quiet confidence of a man who believes his time has come.
Three months ago, the US ambassador to Israel was refusing to take his calls. But now?
'Mike Huckabee [the new ambassador] of course is a great friend. I texted him last night. Most of the new administration have visited here in the last year. They're very connected to the place.'
Mr Ganz, 47, is no ordinary politician. As head of the Yesha Council, he is the political leader of Israel's settler movement in the West Bank.
For much of the international community, and for some in Israel, this is an illegal and, in part, racist movement that forms one of the single biggest obstacles to peace.
But for Mr Ganz and his supporters, including many in the United States, it represents the justified return of the Jewish people to their ancient lands of Judea and Samaria to the west of the Jordan River.
Under Joe Biden, the US amplified its traditional official opposition to West Bank settlements; indeed, it sanctioned individual settlers accused of violence against Palestinians.
But with the re-election of Donald Trump, the atmosphere changed overnight.
Not only did the 47th president cancel those sanctions within days, but his return to the White House has inspired the settler movement to believe that he will finally give Israel the diplomatic cover it needs to annex the West Bank – in other words, to establish legal sovereignty over the territory it seized during the Six Day War of 1967.
Perhaps nothing symbolises the settlers' change in fortune better than Mr Ganz's invitation to the inauguration in January.
In his office, in a modern industrial estate between Jerusalem and Ramallah, there are special edition 'President Trump' bottles of wine on the shelf, a baseball bat, a seal of the president medallion above the keyboard on his desk, among other Americana.
However, Mr Trump had four years to green-light West Bank annexation during his first term, but never did. Why will this time be different?
'He's more experienced, he's much stronger, he understands the situation better,' Mr Ganz replies.
'This term, what I see is that he wants to stabilise the world… he gets into crises and he wants to solve them.'
'I think we have a very big opportunity here.'
For much of the international community, it is precisely the expansion of settlements that is worsening the crisis.
This is because it is often accompanied by violence towards local Palestinians – activists have documented an increase since Mr Trump's re-election – combined with restrictive housing rules in the military-controlled rural areas that makes life unviable for existing communities.
More fundamentally, the settlements create Israeli footprints in what would otherwise be a coherent body of Arab-inhabited land, making a potential Palestinian state – still the policy of most western governments – far more difficult to envisage.
Along with the plight of civilians in Gaza, the alleged injustice in the West Bank is also one of the sticking points holding up normalisation between Israel and other Middle Eastern countries such as Saudi Arabia, a key goal of Mr Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu.
However, there are signs that, despite the situation, attitudes in the more modern-leaning sections of the Sunni Muslim world might be softening.
In March, Mr Ganz led a delegation of settlers to Abu Dhabi, where he met government officials.
Although, as part of the UAE, the oil-rich kingdom already signed a normalisation deal with Israel in Mr Trump's first term – the Abraham Accords – the trip still marked an unprecedented first formal visit to a Muslim country by the Yesha Council.
'I was happy to meet the leaders there,' said Mr Ganz. 'They want a better future and they are very brave. When you put hate aside you can do a lot together.'
Opponents of settler expansionism, in Israel and elsewhere, would argue that 'hate' is more likely to come from the project itself, pointing to the drumbeat of violence emanating – often under the protection of the IDF and police – from the largely segregated Israeli communities.
Only this week a Palestinian man named Wael Rarabi died after his home was set on fire during a settler attack and, according to eyewitnesses, he was then beaten by soldiers in a village north of Ramallah.
Meanwhile, earlier this month The Telegraph revealed that serious attacks in the symbolic village of Susya, south of Hebron, have escalated to a rate of one every two days.
Mr Ganz contends this narrative, which he says is propagated 'by people connected to terror – and we can prove it easily'.
He claims there were 6,000 'terror events' in the West Bank in the last year, 'Arabs to Jews', but 'dozens, I don't know, hundreds, Jews against Arabs'.
Palestinians say the police often make it practically impossible for them to lodge formal complaints.
For most, the imposition of full Israeli law, rather than the military governance currently in place in the West Bank's mainly rural Area C, would be a catastrophe for their hopes of self-government.
However, Mr Ganz argues that by providing 'clarity' to the situation, it would unlock economic opportunity for both communities.
'The situation here holds everyone hostage,' he said. 'When I go to Prime Minister Netanyahu and tell him I want to invest billions of dollars to improve roads here, water, electricity…the state of Israel will say 'Israeli law doesn't apply here. We don't want to invest big money when we don't know where it will belong in the future'.'
'If we build more industrial zones, more healthcare, it will be for everyone,' he adds.
Mr Ganz said Israel should not seek actively to govern Palestinian areas, which should be free to elect municipal leaders.
'I will not manage Ramallah,' he says. 'I don't understand the culture, the language – they have to vote for their own people.'
In short, he envisages a benign future for the West Bank where, under a stable umbrella of Israeli sovereignty and economic growth, the two communities manage their own affairs.
Opponents argue that this vision leaves the crucial facts unsaid. Namely, that annexation would, in practice, allow Israeli settlers to continue expanding in the fertile, open areas, while confining the Palestinians to increasingly crumbling and crowded cities.
Mr Trump's failed attempt at an Israel-Palestine settlement in his first term – the so-called 'deal of the century' – was accused of risking more or less that outcome.
With Mr Huckabee, arguably the most pro-Zionist ambassador in US history, recently confirmed by the Senate, but no presidential visit to Israel yet in diary, it remains to be seen whether Trump 2.0 will justify Mr Ganz's dreams.
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