Trump nominations set stage for fresh clash between annexation, normalization backers

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

61% : With Trump set to return to office as that deadline expires, proponents of annexation are again confident that their time has come.
59% : The far-right was further emboldened when Trump tapped former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee to be his ambassador to Israel, in one of his first nominations in the week after the election.
58% : Abbas has resumed contact with Trump, and the two held a "very warm" call last month, the Palestinian official said.
53% : As for whether Trump will end up prioritizing a Saudi normalization deal over supporting Israeli annexation of the West Bank, the Arab diplomat acknowledged that his guess was as good as anyone's.
52% : A longtime advocate of the settlement movement, Huckabee said last month that Trump could support Israel annexing the West Bank.
52% : Trump's former Iran envoy Brian Hook, who is leading the administration's State Department transition team, said as much in an interview last month, while acknowledging that Israel's appetite for a two-state solution has even lessened since October 7.Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accepted the plan with reservations after appearing alongside Trump at the White House for the proposal's unveiling, while settler leaders fumed over its inclusion of a roadmap for Palestinian statehood.
49% : Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich predicted that 2025 will be "the year of sovereignty in Judea and Samaria" and National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir declared that now is "the time for sovereignty, the time for total victory, the time to legislate death penalty for terrorists law," and many other pieces of legislation that he opined Trump would not oppose.
46% : Earlier this week, Trump announced that his son-in-law's father Massad Boulos would serve as his senior adviser on Arab and Middle Eastern Affairs.
42% : Even if Riyadh backs off from the demand when Trump is back in office, two senior Arab officials told The Times of Israel that Riyadh will not accept anything less than what the UAE received from Israel in 2020 regarding annexation.
38% : Refusal to do so could lead the next administration to move forward with a Saudi normalization deal that offers very little to the Palestinians, while Trump heeds calls from aides to back Israeli annexation of the West Bank, one of the senior Arab officials warned.
31% : "Trump has not weighed in on the issue of annexation, but he has made clear that he would like to pick up where he left off with the Abraham Accords.

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