TEL AVIV, Israel – A prominent group of American Christian leaders recently reiterated their belief in the Jewish people’s right to Judea and Samaria, often referred to as the West Bank, as the biblical heartland of Israel.
American Christian Leaders for Israel presented the declaration at the National Religious Broadcasters Convention in Dallas. Organizers anticipated 3,000 religious leaders would sign it before it was delivered to President Trump.
This push for Israeli sovereignty in the area follows Trump’s statement last month that his administration would announce its position on annexation in the coming weeks.
The Oslo Accords, established under the Clinton administration, divided the West Bank into Area A (full Palestinian jurisdiction), Area B (Palestinian civil administration and Israeli security control), and Area C (full Israeli authority).
A 2020 Trump plan considered Israel annexing parts of Judea and Samaria but was put aside in favor of the Abraham Accords, which normalized relations between Israel and four Arab nations.
“Evangelicals gave Trump the presidency. He will support our position on the Bible, and that’s why he chose Mike Huckabee [as ambassador to Jerusalem], who supports Israeli sovereignty over Judea and Samaria,” Dr. Mike Evans, founder of Friends of Zion, which claims nearly 30 million members, told Digital.
The declaration reaffirms “the Jewish people’s inalienable right to the Biblical Heartland of Israel and rejects all efforts—both from the United States and the international community—to pressure the Jewish people to relinquish their ancestral homeland in Judea and Samaria.”
Evans stated that evangelicals support Israel “because they believe in moral clarity, good versus evil, they are friends of Zion. They see Jews being killed because they’re Jews, not because of land.”
Pastor John Hagee, founder and chairman of Christians United for Israel, told Digital that Evangelicals “know the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob will always keep His word to the Children of Israel. From beginning to end, the Bible is a Zionist document mandating that all believers stand with, and bless, Israel and her people.”
“For almost half a century, I have been preaching the message that Israel does not occupy the land, Israel owns the land, the title deed of which is recorded in the pages of the Bible. The land was endowed by God to the Jewish people for all time,” Hagee added.
Earlier this week, Digital reported that Republican lawmakers, led by Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-N.Y.), urged the president to recognize Judea and Samaria as Israeli territory. Their letter expressed support for Jerusalem applying sovereignty over the area, which they described as “the heart of our shared Judeo-Christian heritage.”
Israel’s Parliament Speaker Amir Ohana urged the government on Feb. 23 to extend sovereignty over the area, stating that full control was the “one and only way” to achieve lasting peace.
Another Likud lawmaker, Dan Illouz, told Digital that Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023 massacre “proved that any withdrawal, any concession, any illusion of coexistence with those who seek our destruction is not just naive—it is suicidal… we withdrew from Gaza, and in return we got Hamas and the massacre of our people. Judea and Samaria cannot become another terror state.”
“A push for sovereignty in Judea and Samaria would be the end of Israel,” Yossi Beilin, a former Israeli lawmaker and an architect of the 1993 Oslo Accords, told Digital. “If Israel were to become a minority of Jews dominating a majority of Palestinians, it would be neither Jewish nor democratic. I don’t believe it could ever happen, but just waving this [idea] is bad enough,” he said.
“The right in Israel believes that Trump would support whatever they demand. But five years ago, he suggested there could be a two-state solution. As such, it is not as clear-cut as it seems,” he added.
Late last month, Netanyahu ordered the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) to conduct a “massive” counter-terrorism operation in Judea and Samaria after exploded near Tel Aviv, and bombs were found on two others in what is being investigated as a coordinated attack.
“This brutality and forceful displacement of civilians in the West Bank… was never about self-defense, but rather a colonial expansion scheme and an ethnic cleansing campaign,” Ahmad Fattouh, a spokesman for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s dominant Fatah faction, told Digital.
“Annexing the West Bank will set us back to 1948 and destroy any future stability or prospects for peace. Every rational voice understands too well that there is no way forward except the two-state solution; otherwise, it will lead to endless havoc,” he added.
Israel Ganz, head of the Yesha Council, which represents Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria, is working with the government to push for sovereignty.
“We started a campaign to push for it, but we won’t do it without the support of the U.S.,” he told Digital. “Many in the Trump administration are very connected, they know the area, and they believe in our right to this place. They understand that if they want to stabilize the situation, we must have sovereignty in Judea and Samaria.”
“For Israel to be able to continue to survive and thrive along the coastal plain, which produces about 80% of the country’s GDP, then it must keep control of the high grounds in Judea and Samaria,” Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus (ret.), a former IDF international spokesperson and now a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Digital.
“If any other entity, Palestinian or otherwise, holds that, it would be used as a way to threaten Israel’s security; its core infrastructure, including Ben-Gurion Airport, and also its population– concentrated in a narrow strip between Haifa [in the north] and Ashdod [in the south]–approximately 15 kilometers wide,” he said.
Conricus also noted that approximately 500,000 Israelis reside in Judea and Samaria and require protection.
“The trends of escalation in Judea and Samaria and Jerusalem are highest now since Oct. 7. We see significant terrorist activity in almost all Palestinian cities and continued weakness of the P.A. in exercising control,” he said.
Ze’ev Orenstein, director of international affairs at the Jerusalem-based , told Digital that the Jewish people’s millennia-long connection to the Land of Israel bestows upon them an inherent right to Judea and Samaria.
“The reality is that there is likely no other people on the planet today with a deeper–and longer–connection to any piece of land than the Jewish people with the Land of Israel, in general, and Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem, in particular; where the inhabitants continue to worship the very same G-d, speak the same language, practice the same faith, celebrate the same festivals, and walk upon the very same stones, as their ancestors did so many thousands of years ago,” Orenstein added.