Few can doubt that the Biden administration’s legacy on Palestine was a controversial one. Fewer still, could have expected that anyone could ‘trump him’ after he brazenly greenlighted billions of dollars of military aid to "Israel" and remained indifferent to the destruction, decimation, and deprivation of Palestinians under occupation.

However, days after his predecessor took office, Biden has been truly ‘trumped’ and that too by Donald Trump himself. The 47^th President of the United States has adopted a knee-jerk, parochial, bigoted, and nativist stance on Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian territories, which not only greenlights Palestinian extermination but deliberately enables it through state sponsorship. With such policies being implemented, the Trump era spells further doom and gloom for Palestinians.

The international community should not remain silent to such crass approval of apartheid.

Here’s why:

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Among a slew of executive orders that Trump passed since assuming office such as enabling a mass deportation drive, revoking birthright citizenship, closing the border with Mexico, and proclaiming a national emergency to prevent mass immigration, is the draconian lifting of sanctions on Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian territories. This includes 30 settler groups which were previously sanctioned by the Biden administration and prevented from accessing the American financial system, purchasing American property, or owning American assets. The sanctions also target organizations such as Amana Ltd, who are notorious for violent and extremist activity against the Palestinians on their own land.

The broad consensus of the international community is that Israeli settlements, instrumentalised by the Zionist regime since the 1967 war, are illegal colonies built on Palestinian land. These settlements mirror the creation of Bantustans in Apartheid South Africa by the white minority government which targeted the majority Black African population as a racially segregated population. Regardless of their controversial reputation, however, Israeli settlements have proliferated since 1967 with subsidies granted and political support extended by the Israeli government to ensure that the business enterprise thrives through the plundering of Palestinian lands, farms, children, and women. As per Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, these settlements violate international law with the destruction of private or state-owned property of an occupied population constituting a war crime. This is also stated by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and many other national laws.

Barring mild condemnation however, the United States made no effort to upend the settlement enterprise where varsities, such as Ariel University, which were built by expelling Palestinians and disbarring them from accessing their own land, continued unabated. This allowed "Israel" to deflect international criticism and ignore rulings and advisory opinions from the International Court of Justice on the enterprise. American castigation of Israeli settlement adventurism has also been limited to academic and civil society advocacy instead of Congress officially sanctioning the Israeli state for enabling it. Recall too that in 2024, Joe Biden sanctioned settlements months before Trump’s inauguration, which hints at political powerplay from the Democrats rather than any sincere attempt to ban 21^st century apartheid.  

Donald Trump, however, has gone a step further. The US President who is known for his conservative leanings has given a free pass to Israeli settlers who are notorious for their hardcore Zionist beliefs, resolve towards eliminating Palestinians, ‘Biblical’ claims to the occupied lands, arson, extrajudicial killings, and confiscation of Palestinian property. With cosmetic sanctions from Joe Biden now lifted, the toxic combination of far-right extremism and conservative approval from Washington D.C. is set to wreak further havoc on Palestinians. Such crass political acceptance of settlements is made worse by Trump’s calls to have Palestinians expelled to neighboring Jordan and Egypt. This not only paves the way for a mass displacement drive, which has been a recurring feature for Palestinians since the 1948 Nakba, but is a nod to settlers to take over the West Bank and annex it into Israeli territory.  

To understand the gravity of what is unfolding, one should simply reflect on how groups such as the Hilltop Youth, an extremist, religious, Kahanist organization which has set up illegal Israeli outposts, have remained undeterred in the face of sanctions from the Biden administration. In 2024 and prior to Trump’s lifting of sanctions, approximately 4,250 Palestinians were displaced due to Israeli settler violence in the West Bank, which was completely ignored by the Israeli authorities. The former Police Minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir who is also a settlement advocate, is also responsible for abetting and colluding with the settlers to ensure that they destroy close to a staggering 1,760 structures in the occupied West Bank.

It is clear that settlements not only economically strangulate the Palestinian economy but are now being enabled politically to eliminate Palestinians as Trump panders to the inbuilt ethos of Zionist supremacy. His lifting of sanctions has given a further push to the proliferation of this menacing enterprise which is one of the glaring impediments towards a future Palestinian state. By not only defying international law and the collective conscience of the majority of UN member states, Donald Trump is greenlighting further Palestinian suffering to the point of their elimination, expulsion, and destruction.  

If the international community does not call out the Trump administration’s bigotry now, it will once again lose its moral compass by turning a blind eye to the death, destruction, and occupation of Palestinians.