Israel’s far-right Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir expressed hope today that Israel will extend its sovereignty over the occupied West Bank by 2025.

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who also has an oversight role at the defense ministry for settlers as part of the coalition deal with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said he hoped the incoming US Trump administration would recognize Israel’s push for dominance in the occupied West Bank, according to a statement from Smotrich’s office.

Smotrich has for years called for Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank, land the Palestinians want for a future state.

In yet another statement indicative of the mood, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sha’ar said today that the establishment of a Palestinian state is not “currently” a “realistic” plan.

In particular, Smotrich stated that the election of Donald Trump as the 47th president of the United States provides Israel with a “significant opportunity” to “implement Israeli sovereignty over the settlements in Judea and Samaria.”

Addressing the press ahead of his party’s weekly meeting in the Knesset, Smotrich hailed Trump’s victory over incumbent Joe Biden, whose administration he accused of “unfortunately choosing to interfere in Israeli democracy and personally not working with me.”

Donald Trump’s first term in 2017-2021 has been positive for Israel, Smotrich said, citing the move of the US embassy to Jerusalem, the recognition of the Golan Heights as Israeli territory and the White House’s decision to declare that the settlements of Israel in the West Bank were in accordance with international law.

“We were one step away from implementing settlement sovereignty in Judea and Samaria, and now is the time to do it,” Smotrich said, calling 2025 “the year of sovereignty in Judea and Samaria.”

The only way to remove the “danger” of a Palestinian state “is to apply Israeli sovereignty to the settlements in Judea and Samaria,” the far-right minister continued, calling such a course of action the appropriate response to Hamas, Hezbollah and the rest. of the “terrorist axis supported by Iran”.

Revealing that he had ordered the Defense Ministry’s Settlement Directorate and the Civil Administration to begin preparing the groundwork for the implementation of sovereignty, Smotrich insists that while Israel’s enemies saw October 7 as “the first step to destruction [του]… you young Nazis must pay a price in the land that will be taken away from them forever in both Gaza and Judea and Samaria.”