Donald Trump makes a massive promise to Arab leaders that will surely infuriate Benjamin Netanyahu

In a huge turn of events, Donald Trump has promised Arab and Muslim leaders that he won’t let Israel annex the occupied West Bank.

The promise came during a meeting with eight Arab and Muslim countries at the United Nations headquarters, a sit-down that Trump called his “most important” of the day. While he left without talking to reporters after the meeting, the news that he was “firm” on the issue quickly spread, and it’s a big deal.

According to Politico, Israel has been steadily extending its de facto control over the West Bank by building more Jewish settlements and tightening its security presence, and some of the more extreme members of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government have been pushing to formally annex the territory. This has been a huge point of contention and has led to a lot of frustration among Arab leaders. It’s a promise that could really shake things up, especially for those hoping to see a peaceful resolution.

To be fair, this isn’t the first time an Israeli annexation of the West Bank has been on the table. Back in 2020, the Abraham Accords, one of the biggest foreign policy achievements of Trump’s first term, came about after Israel was threatening to annex the territory. At that time, the United Arab Emirates offered to normalize ties with Israel in exchange for a promise not to go through with it, but there have been issues all over.

Trump is hard on Israel for one issue

So, the promise not to annex the West Bank is a key part of the deal that helped normalize relations between Israel and several Arab nations. Arab leaders have said that formal annexation is a “red line” that would stop any future integration of Israel into the Middle East. In fact, officials from the UAE have warned that any unilateral annexations would “foreclose the idea of regional integration” and could even put the Abraham Accords at risk.

It seems that the Arab leaders at the UN meeting made it clear to Trump that any Israeli move into the West Bank would likely cause the Abraham Accords to fall apart. They’re not happy with Trump’s previous stance, which has included opposing the recognition of a Palestinian state and continuing to support Netanyahu’s assault on Hamas. The violence has been escalating, with Israel recently trying to take out Hamas officials who were in Qatar for peace talks. With more than 64,000 Palestinians killed in the conflict, there’s a lot of pressure on Trump to do more to get Netanyahu to end the war.

The timing of this is especially interesting because of the recent moves by a number of top U.S. allies to recognize a Palestinian state. This has put a lot of pressure on Netanyahu at home, with some of his far-right government members pushing him to annex all or parts of the West Bank as a retaliatory measure. Some of them even see this as a chance to finally achieve the Israeli right’s long-held goal of absorbing the territory. With Israeli elections coming up next year, Netanyahu might see this as an opportunity to appeal to his hardline supporters.

The Arab and European officials have been pretty clear, warning that a formal annexation of the West Bank would pretty much kill any last hope for a two-state solution. The United States has been a key player in brokering peace in the region, and this new position from Trump could be a major step toward de-escalation. It looks like Trump’s promise might be the kind of pressure that is needed to get things moving in the right direction. The world is watching to see if this promise will hold up.