The far right in Israel has long dreamed of settling all of the West Bank, and Gaza, too—annexing the territories to create the land they refer to as Greater Israel. The Trump Administration might not object: Elise Stefanik, Trump’s pick for Ambassador to the United Nations, has agreed that Israel has a “biblical right” to the West Bank. “I think Israel is just more emboldened with Trump in office,” says Hisham Awartani, who lives in Ramallah and is now attending Brown University. The reporter Suzanne Gaber has been covering Awartani and his family since he was left paralyzed by a shooting in Burlington, Vermont. (Two other Palestinian students, Kinnan Abdalhamid and Tahseen Ali Ahmad, were also shot and injured.) Gaber visited the Awartanis recently in Ramallah to find out how people in the West Bank are thinking about annexation. But, rather than a future event that might happen, the Awartanis describe annexation as a process already well underway. “I’m twenty-one years old,” Hisham tells Gaber. “ In the period of time that I’ve been alive, it’s been a slow push. It’s, like, I’m the frog in the boiling pot.”
What happened to the Palestinian students in Burlington?
I don't know, like, I kind of wish I could be there. Just like... You know, experience it with my family. Like, I don't want to feel like I'm abandoning my family. Maybe it's a bit of survivor's guilt.
The survivor's guilt was eating at him. He was attending classes, going to physical therapy, but in every lecture, every new workout, the desire to return to the West Bank and be with his family hung over him.
I felt like the time is ticking and that, like, There could be a possibility that some form of annexation happens while I'm outside. And then because I'm outside, I lose my legal status to live in Palestine.
Since Donald Trump was elected in November, the possibility of annexation has felt even more imminent.
A high-profile Israeli lawmaker said yesterday Israel is a, quote, step away from annexing the occupied West Bank following Trump's election.
Smotrich suggested planning for this is already in motion.
He's ordered his officials to draw up plans for Israel to annex some 150 settlements in the West Bank. Now, Smotrich is a settler himself. He's also a key minister in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's ruling coalition.
So when the fall semester ended in December, Hisham returned to Ramallah for the first time since the shooting. At that point, he told me he might not return to college. He was too worried about what might happen in the West Bank.
Reporter Suzanne Gabbert talking about Hashem Awartani. We'll continue in a moment.
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