The evangelical Christian leader who voted for President Trump is pushing him to declare that Israel can claim ownership of the West Bank based on the promises God gave to the Jews in the Bible.
They are exploring ways to pave the way for the annexation of the widely seen internationally territorial land, as intended as a future Palestinian state. Israel seized its territory in 1967 as part of a war between Jordan, Egypt and Syria, and has since taken over it. In recent years, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's right-wing government has encouraged Jewish settlers to increase their homes there.
Trump's well-known evangelical supporters are increasing the multifaceted approach to putting pressure on the president. Appearing in Israel, petitioning the White House, pushing their ideas at key evangelical conferences and building support for Congress.
Some of America's leading evangelicals, including Ralph Reed, Tony Perkins and Mario Bramnick, visited Jerusalem on Tuesday to publicly support Israel's sovereignty over the West Bank.
“I feel that God is literally giving Israel a blank check,” said Blumnick, president of Israel's Latinx Union and pastor at the Florida Church, whose profile swelled after insisting on a prayer call, claiming the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Trump.
These evangelical leaders are part of a movement called Christian Zionism, and believe that the land was given to the Biblical Jews.
They refer to the Jordan River as the name of the Bible. They believe that Christians who help fulfill this biblical pledge are blessed and that the establishment of the state of Israel indicates that other biblical prophecies will continue. It, but not all, includes the book of Revelation, which in particular leads to the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.
“We Christians are calling on our beloved president and his team to actively remove all barriers to Israel's sovereignty over all lands, including Judea and Samaria,” said Terry Copeland Pearsons, an influential pastor who produced the television program for his father, Kenneth Copyland. She made her remarks last Thursday at the state's National Religious Broadcasting Agency Treaty.
The event organizers pushed for a resolution sponsored by American Christian leaders for Israel and rejected “all efforts” that would pressure Israel to abandon its territory in the West Bank. The group, formed a decade ago, describes its status as a network of around 3,000 Christian leaders “representing tens of millions of American Christians” who advocate “the truth of the Bible” and their steadfast support for Israel. Organizers of the conference said they would present a petition to the White House immediately after the meeting. The sponsors did not respond to requests for comment on the number of people who signed the petition and whether it was presented to the President.
This demand aims to help build support for controversial efforts that encourage parts of Israel to promote the annexed lands, home to around 3 million Palestinians and now around 500,000 Israeli settlers.
Much of the world considers settlements on the West Bank of Israel and has been rapidly expanding in recent years as a violation of international law. Israel challenges this characterization.
As the outlook for an independent Palestinian state became particularly dim-eyed after the Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, the defense of Christian Zionists around the West Bank sparked a war in the Enclave, leading to rising tensions on the West Bank, about 55 miles away.
Those petitioning Trump to help Israel's annexation of the West Bank say they hope that such a declaration will end further debate on the future Palestinian state.
Netanyahu's far-right government has lighted the environment at a fast pace in building and expanding settlements in the West Bank amid the fierce military raids in Palestinian cities since January, resulting in their resolutions. The attacks have driven away tens of thousands of residents.
The petition also joins a wave of similar initiatives by influential conservatives and Christians in Congress and beyond, aiming to shake up policies in the second Trump terminology.
A few days before the Israeli American Christian leaders released the petition, New York Republican leader Claudia Tenney identified him as a Presbyterian and sent a letter similar to five other members of Congress' “Friends of the Jewish and Samaria Caucus.” It called on his administration to “recognize Israel's rights” to declare sovereignty over the territory, saying it was essential to defending “the Jewish-Christian heritage in which our country was established.”
When asked about his position on Israel's annexation of the West Bank in February, Trump said “people like ideas,” and that there will be “presentations on very specific topics over the next four weeks.”
Trump's comments also helped to promote enthusiasm for a resolution on Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank, which was adopted last month at the annual conservative gathering of Conservative Political Action.
Trump supports other Israeli initiatives. Last month he approved a mass Palestine evacuation from Gaza, and in January reversed Biden's executive order that determined that Jordanian-like settlers were deemed to have violated human rights.
He has selected supporters of Israeli evangelical Christianity as key positions in the administration, including televangelist Paula Whitekane as a senior adviser to the newly created White House Faith Office, who has voiced his support for Israel on religious grounds, and Arkansas' Mike Huckabee, a Baptist minister who has been alongside the Baptist prime minister who has long appeared in the candidate for Israeli Mr. Nas.
In 2017, Huckabee took part in a ceremony at the West Bank settlement, thinking that “Israel has titles in Jews and Samaria,” adding that he “is not something like the West Bank” or “profession.” Last year, after he was named after the role of ambassador, he told Israel Army Radio that annexation could be “of course.”
Tenney recently introduced a bill to replace the government's reference to the West Bank, using Bible names instead. According to an internal committee memo first reported by Axios last Wednesday, Florida Republican president Brian Mast, who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee, directed staff to call territorial Jews and Samaria. (Neither lawmaker responded to requests for comment.)
However, Christians are far from uniforms, with many supporting two states' solutions to long-standing conflicts between Palestinians and Israelis. The attitude of evangelical leaders does not reflect the views of the entire community, and they do much less of the perspectives of all Christians and all Americans. Israeli support fell amid the war with Hamas in Gaza, but Palestinian support revived and driven protests on university campuses.
“This is the long and enduring tension that Palestinian Christians have alongside their American brothers, especially evangelicals,” said Daniel Banula, a doctoral candidate for theology at Notre Dame, who hosts a podcast on faith and social justice called “Beyond the Differences.”
Banura, the son of a Baptist minister, grew up on the West Bank and later attended university and graduate school in the US. He said that his community on the West Bank is “very small and diminished,” and that it consists of around 50,000 people by some estimates, which complicates the general narrative, so “Palestinian Christians are not given a voice.”
In contrast, many evangelicals go directly to the White House. Christian Zionist minister and television host Larry Hooch boasted at a press conference promoting the West Bank Annexation Petition, which White Kane of the White House Face office is in touch.
“The current administration is very aware that white evangelical Christians are voted in large numbers and are deeply motivated to support Israel,” said David Catiba, who leads communication and Christian engagement in Washington's terrorist attacks, a group formed by two Christian Americans in 2009.
Kativa said he was raised in the American evangelical community, noting that there is no monolithic perspective on annexation. He said, increasingly, younger evangelicals are embracing a “wideer view” that emphasizes mutual prosperity, justice and human rights on both sides.
Several studies support this. A 2021 survey commissioned by the University of North Carolina at Pembroke found that between 2018 and 2021, young evangelical attitudes had changed rapidly, with support for Israel falling from 75% to less than 35%, with an uptick in the desire to see US policies that reflect Palestinian perspectives.
