President Donald Trump responded to a question from a reporter in the Oval Office on Monday about Israel’s possible annexation of Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) by illustrating how small Israel really is.
The question arose in advance of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to the White House on Tuesday.
Q: Would you support annexation of parts of the West Bank by Israel?
A: Well, I’m not going to talk about that. It certainly is a small country in terms of land. Do you see this pen? This wonderful pen? My desk is the Middle East. And this pen, the top of the pen, that’s Israel. That’s not good, right? That’s a pretty big difference. I use that as an analogy. It is pretty accurate, actually. It is a pretty small piece of land. It is amazing they’ve been able to do what they’ve been able to do, when you think about it. A lot of good, smart brain power, but it is a very small piece of land, no question about it.
Trump has, in the past, given the nod to Israel’s proposed annexation of the West Bank in principle, but pushed back on it in practice, using the prospect of annexation instead as a bargaining chip to reach the Abraham Accords deal.
More recently, Trump has implied that Israel should annex Gaza, and that Palestinians should be encouraged to leave for other Arab countries, rather than staying in a small strip of territory that Hamas has used to launch many wars.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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