from Israel Far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said Monday he hoped Israel would illegally annex the country. Occupied West Bank in 2025 and that it would push the government to involve the new Asset the American administration to obtain support from Washington.

Israel’s new Foreign Minister, Gideon Saar, separately said that although no decision had been made, the issue could be raised in negotiations with the future US administration in Washington.

Smotrich, who also serves in a Defense Department oversight role over the settlers as part of his coalition deal with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said he hoped the new Trump administration in Washington would recognize the attempt of Israeli annexation.

Smotrich has for years called for Israel’s annexation of the West Bank, inhabited by Palestinians and illegally occupied by Israel in 1967.

At a meeting of his extremist Religious Zionism faction in Parliament on Monday, Smotrich said he had asked Israeli authorities overseeing West Bank settlements “to begin professional and comprehensive work to prepare the necessary infrastructure” for the annexation, according to a statement from his office.

He also said he would push the government to encourage the new Trump administration to recognize such a move.

Saar said that while leaders of the settlement movement might be confident that new President Donald Trump might be inclined to support such measures, the government had not made any decisions.

“No decision has yet been made on this issue,” Saar said at a news conference in Jerusalem.

“The last time we discussed this issue was during President Trump’s first term,” he said. “And so let’s say that if it turns out to be relevant, we will discuss it again with our friends in Washington as well.”

During his first term, Trump presided over the most pro-Israel administration in US history, recognizing Israel’s annexation of Syria’s Golan Heights and moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

The United States, however, still officially supports a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians and has urged Israel not to expand settlements.

The occupied West Bank would constitute the majority of any future Palestinian state and Israeli annexation would make the creation of such a state impossible. Israeli settlements in the territory are illegal under international law.

Smotrich’s comments come as the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights on Monday condemned mass arrests, mistreatment and “gratuitous humiliation” of Israeli forces during raids on refugee camps and towns in the occupied West Bank.

The organization said it had documented “use of unnecessary, disproportionate and otherwise unlawful force in the Palestinian communities of Madama, Dura and the Fawwar refugee camps, among others, over the past month, although in many case, there is no apparent threat to the public. order or security of the occupying forces.

Many rights groups and analysts have said Israel is exploiting the focus on the war on Gaza to advance its settlement and annexation agenda in the West Bank.

“Over the past decades, the Israeli occupation has gradually progressed in its geographic consolidation in the West Bank,” said Ahmad Abu Al-Hijaa, an expert on Palestinian affairs, in an interview with The new Arabic earlier this year.

He noted that although these expansionist efforts began well before the Gaza war, “the conflict provided Israel with a strategic entry point to accelerate these plans,” effectively “annexing the West Bank under Israeli rule.”