Evangelical Christian leaders who have delivered votes to President Trump are now pressing him to declare that Israel can claim the ownership of the West Bank, on the basis of a promise that God has done to the Jews in the Bible.
They are looking for a way to open a path to the annexation of the territory which is widely considered internationally as intended for a future Palestinian state. Israel has seized the territory as part of a war between it, Jordan, Egypt and Syria in 1967 and has since occupied it. In recent years, the right minister’s right government Benjamin Netanyahu has encouraged Jewish settlers to build houses there at a growing pace.
The main evangelical supporters of Mr. Trump are increasing a multiple approach to put pressure on the president – by appearing in Israel, presenting a petition to the White House, pushing their ideas in a key evangelical conference and building the support of the congress.
Some of the main American evangelicals, including Ralph Reed, Tony Perkins and Mario Bramnick, visited Jerusalem on Tuesday to publicly support the Israeli sovereignty of the West Bank.
“I literally feel that God is giving Israel a white check,” said Bramnick, president of the Latin coalition for Israel and the shepherd of a Church of Florida whose profile mounted after hosting prayer calls to support the claims of the 2020 presidential elections by Mr. Trump.
These evangelical leaders are part of a movement called Christian Zionism and believe that the earth was given to Jews in the Bible.
They refer to the West Bank with the biblical names of Judea and Samaria. They believe that Christians who help to satisfy this biblical commitment are blessed and that the institution of the state of Israel indicates that other biblical prophecies will follow. For some, even if not everyone, which includes in particular an apocalypse that will lead to a second coming of Jesus Christ.
“We Christians are asking our beloved President Trump and his team to aggressively remove all the barriers to the sovereignty of Israel all over the earth, including Giudea and Samaria,” said Terre Copeland Pearson made the observations to the national convention of religious issuers in the state last Thursday.
The organizers of the event pushed a resolution sponsored by the American Christian leaders for Israel who refuses “all efforts” to pressure on Israel to give up the territory of the West Bank. That group, formed a decade ago, describes itself as a network of about 3,000 Christian leaders “who represent tens of millions of American Christians” who support “biblical truth” and constant support for Israel. The organizers of the convention said they would present the petition to the White House shortly after the conference. The sponsors did not respond to a request for comment on how many people signed the petition and if it was presented to the president.
The question aims to help build support for a controversial effort promoted by some in Israel to annex land that host about three million Palestinians and now about half a million Israeli colonists.
Much of the world considers the Israeli settlements of the West Bank, which have expanded rapidly in recent years, a violation of international law. Israel disputes this characterization.
The Christian Zionist Defense around the West Bank arrives when the prospect of an independent Palestinian state became particularly dimly from the attack led by Hamas to Israel on October 7, 2023, he turned on a war in the enclave and also led to growing tensions in the West Bank, about 55 miles away.
Those who ask for Mr. Trump to support the Israeli annexation of the West Bank, say they hope that this declaration will end any further discussion on a future Palestinian state there.
Their resolution comes when the far -right government of Netanyahu has marked the construction of settlements and the expansion in western Cisgiordanian at a faster rhythm than in the past and between intense military raids in the Palestinian cities since January. The raids have cleared tens of thousands of residents.
The petition also joins a wave of similar initiatives of influential conservative and Christians, to the congress and beyond, with the aim of influencing politics in Trump’s second mandate.
Days before the American Christian leaders for Israel announced the petition, the representative Claudia Tenney, a republican of New York, who identifies himself as presbyterian, sent a letter similar to Mr. Trump with five other members of the “Friends of the Giudea and Samaria Caucus” congress “, started this year. He invited his administration to “recognize the right of Israel” to declare sovereignty in the area, saying that it would be an integral part of the defense “the Judeo-Christian legacy on which our nation was founded”.
As a question in February in a press conference with Mr. Netanyahu on his position on the Israeli annexation of the West Bank, Trump said that “people like the idea” and that there would be “an advertisement probably on that very specific topic in the next four weeks”.
Mr. Trump’s comments also helped the enthusiasm fueled for a resolution on Israeli sovereignty on the West Bank, adopted last month at the conservative political action conference, an annual conservative meeting that establishes the agenda.
Trump supported other Israeli -right initiatives: last month he supported the Palestinian massacre of Massa da Gaza and, in January, he exceeded an executive order of Biden who had allowed sanctions for the settlers of the West Bank believed that they had violated human rights.
He has selected the Christian Evangelical supporters of Israel for key positions in his administration, including televinist Paula White-Cain as a senior councilor of the Faith Office of the White House just created which is vocal for his support for Israel for religious reasons, and Mike Huckabae of Arkansas, a former governor, a former governor.
In 2017, Huckabae participated in a ceremony in an agreement of the West Bank and told the CNN that he thinks that “Israel has an act of title in Judea and Samaria”, adding that “there is no thing like a West Bank” or “an occupation”. Last year after being appointed for the role of the ambassador, he said on the radio of the Israeli army that the annexation was “obviously” a possibility.
Mrs. Tenney has recently introduced a bill that will replace the government’s references to the West Bank and would instead use biblical names. The representative Brian Mast, the Florida Republican who presides over the Committee for Foreign Affairs of the Chamber, commissioned the staff to call the territory of the Judea and Samaria, according to a memo of the internal committee reported for the first time by Axios last Wednesday. (Neither of the two legislators responded to requests for comment.)
Christians are far from uniform, however, and many support a two -states solution to the long -standing conflict between Palestinians and Israelis. The position of the evangelical leaders does not reflect the opinions of the whole community, much less the perspective of all Christians or all Americans in general, since the support of Israel fell in the middle of his war with Hamas in Gaza, while support for the Palestinians has risen and guided a protest movement on university campuses.
“This is a long and lasting tension that we Palestinian Christians have with our brothers in the United States, in particular the evangelicals”, Daniel Bannoura, a doctorate of theology in Notre Dame that hosts a podcast on faith and social justice called “through the division”.
Bannoura, son of a Baptist minister, grew up in the West Bank and later attended college and the School of Specialization in the United States. He said that since his community in the West Bank was “very small and decreasing” – made up of about 50,000 people according to some estimates – and since their identities complicate prevalent narratives, “Palestinian Christians have not received a voice”.
In stark contrast, many evangelicals have a direct line to the White House. Larry Huch, a Christian Zionist Minister and TV presenter, boasted of the press conference that promotes the petition for the annexation of the West Bank that Mrs. White-Cat of the Office of Faith of the White House was in contact.
“The current administration is very aware of the fact that white evangelical Christians have voted in large numbers and are deeply motivated to support Israel,” said David Katibah, who leads communications and Christian commitment to Telos in Washington, a group made up of two Christians in 2009-an evangelical formation.
Katibah said he had grown up in an American Evangelical community and observed that there is no monolithic perspective to annexation within it. More and more evangelical younger are embracing “a more expansive vision” which mutually emphasizes flourish, justice and human rights for both sides, he said.
Some searches do this point back. A 2021 survey commissioned by the University of Northern Carolina in Pembroke has found a strong change in the attitudes between the young evangelical young people between 2018 and 2021, with their support in Israel that drops from 75 % less than 35 % together with an increase in accompanying the desire to see the United States politics that reflects a Palestinian perspective.