Trump: “I gave my word to the Arab countries. If the annexation of the West Bank takes place, Israel will lose US support”
Donald Trump speaks to reporters aboard Air Force One. Credit line: SAUL LOEB / AFP / Profimedia
US President Donald Trump warned that Israel will lose “the support of the United States” if it annexes the West Bank, in an interview given to Time magazine and published on Thursday, reports AFP, according to Agerpres.
Asked about those annexation plans in the interview, which the paper says was conducted by phone on October 15, Trump said: “It's not going to happen. It's not going to happen because I've given my word to the Arab countries” as part of ceasefire negotiations in the Gaza Strip.
“And you can't do that now. Israel would lose all support from the United States if that happened,” he added.
The interview was published as US Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who arrived in Israel late Thursday, expressed outrage at the Knesset's (Israeli parliament) decision to consider two bills aimed at expanding Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank, a Palestinian territory occupied by Israel since 1967.
For Washington, such a bill undermines efforts to consolidate the fragile truce in the Gaza Strip after two years of devastating war, triggered by a Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.
In the Time interview, the Republican leader also discussed how he pressured Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to get him to accept the peace plan.
“Bibi, you can't fight against the whole world,” he claimed to have told Netanyahu during a phone conversation. “You know, I stopped him because he would have gone on. He could have gone on for years,” Trump said.
The US president also said he was confident Saudi Arabia would normalize relations with Israel by the end of the year.
“There is no more Iranian threat (after the Israeli and American attacks). We have peace in the Middle East,” he assured, adding that he “knows” that countries will align “very quickly” with the Abraham Accords.
Asked if that would happen by the end of the year, he said: “Yes, I think so.”
In 2020, the Abraham Accords, brokered by Donald Trump during his first term in the White House, led to the normalization of relations between Israel and several Arab countries.
The US president also noted what he called a lack of real leadership among the Palestinians, while praising his relationship with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and saying he would “make a decision” on Israel's release of Marwan Barghouti, the prominent Palestinian leader jailed in Israel.
