CNN —Israel’s far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, has ordered preparations for the annexation of settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
President-elect Donald Trump’s victory in the US election “brings an important opportunity for the State of Israel,” Smotrich told the Knesset, or Israeli parliament.
The “only way to remove” the “threat” of a Palestinian state, Smotrich added, “is to apply Israeli sovereignty over the entire settlements in Judea and Samaria,” the biblical term by which Israelis refer to the West Bank.
Around half a million Israelis live in West Bank settlements.
Smotrich, himself a settler, has long called for Israeli law to apply in the settlements, and previously opposed the creation of an independent Palestinian state.
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