President Trump warns Israel it will lose all support from the US if it applies sovereignty in Judea and Samaria, saying he promised Arab states Israel would not move forward with annexation.
By World Israel News Staff
President Donald Trump warned Israel not to apply sovereignty over parts of Judea and Samaria in a newly published interview, explicitly ruling out any steps by Jerusalem to annex territory during his second term in office.
On Thursday, Time Magazine published an interview conducted via telephone with the president last Wednesday.
During the interview, which focused heavily on the president’s 20-point Gaza peace plan, Trump revealed his conversations with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu leading up to the Gaza ceasefire agreement.
“I said to Bibi, ‘Bibi, you can’t fight the world. You can fight individual battles, but the world’s against you. And Israel is a very small place compared to the world.’”
“You know, I stopped him, because he would have just kept going. It could have gone on for years. It would have gone on for years. And I stopped him, and everybody came together when I stopped, it was amazing.”
Trump claimed that Israel’s September 9th missile strike on a Hamas meeting in Doha was a pivotal movement in the Gaza hostage deal talks, while calling Netanyahu’s decision to strike a “tactical mistake.”
“And when he made that one tactical mistake, the one on Qatar, and that was terrible, but actually, and I actually told the emir, this was one of the things that brought us all together, because it was so out of joint that it sort of got everybody to do what they have to do.”
In addition to growing international pressure on Israel to halt the war in Gaza, Trump said that Israeli public support for a hostage deal was instrumental in securing the truce deal.
“He had to stop because the world was going to stop him. You know, I could see what was happening. You could see what was happening. And Israel was becoming very unpopular.”
“Israel was so intent on the hostages, I was actually surprised. You would have thought they would have sacrificed the hostages in order to keep going, right? The people of Israel wanted the hostages more than they wanted anything else. And we got the hostages.”
Turning to efforts within the Israeli government and the Knesset to extend sovereignty over parts of Judea and Samaria, Trump firmly rejected any annexation plans, stating that he had already promised Arab leaders “it will not happen.”
“It won’t happen because I gave my word to the Arab countries. And you can’t do that now. We’ve had great Arab support. It won’t happen because I gave my word to the Arab countries.”
Trump even threatened to drop all support for Israel should Jerusalem move forward with annexation.
“Israel would lose all of its support from the United States if that happened.”
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