Trump’s ‘Time’ interview preceded the sovereignty vote, stupid!
The U.S. president’s remarks to the magazine were made more than a week before Israel’s parliament passed the first reading of the bill.
By Ruthie Blum
JNS
Oct 26, 2025
All the outlets highlighting U.S. President Donald Trump’s alleged “response” to the passage of two Knesset bills in favor of extending Israeli sovereignty over Judea and Samaria should be called to task for journalistic negligence, if not disingenuousness.
Citing Trump’s Oct. 24 interview with Time magazine, reporters and pundits on the left have been claiming—with customary glee about a fantasized chasm between Washington and Jerusalem—that the president’s comments came in the wake of the Oct. 23 Knesset vote.
The same goes for those to the right of Netanyahu, who keep expressing their ire that the United States is treating Israel like a vassal state—and point to Trump’s remarks as evidence.
What both groups have in common is a lack of trust in how the Israeli prime minister has been handling his relationship with Trump. As though he hasn’t been steering the country valiantly through the multi-front war, with every kind of domestic and foreign pressure imaginable.
So, let’s set the record straight with a few facts. The first is that the Time interview, conducted over the phone by Eric Cortellessa on Oct. 15, took place eight days prior to the Knesset vote.
The second is that Trump has been saying for months what he reiterated in the interview. The exchange, taken from the transcript, was as follows:
Question: “You told Netanyahu you will not allow him to annex the West Bank. There are still forces in his coalition who are pressing for it. I’m just wondering what, what are the consequences if they move forward?”
Answer: “It won’t happen. It won’t happen. It won’t happen because I gave my word to the Arab countries. And you can’t do that now. We’ve had great Arab support. It won’t happen because I gave my word to the Arab countries. It will not happen. Israel would lose all of its support from the United States if that happened.”
Though it’s true that Trump hasn’t been as explicit about the loss of U.S. support in the event of sovereignty-extension in Judea and Samaria, he has made it clear to Netanyahu since 2020 that such a move would jeopardize his Mideast “Peace to Prosperity” vision, previously known as the “Deal of the Century.”
Prior to Trump’s announcement on Aug. 13 that year of his having brokered a peace agreement between Israel and the United Arab Emirates—along with accompanying reports that the deal precluded “annexation of the West Bank—Netanyahu had set July 1 as the target date to begin the process of extending sovereignty over the Jordan Valley and the Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria.
But then it emerged that the prime minister had been busy for weeks negotiating the terms of the treaty with Trump and Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan. It’s this that put the sovereignty plan on hold indefinitely, and enabled the signing of the Abraham Accords with the UAE and Bahrain on Sept. 15.
Less than two months later, Trump lost the U.S. presidential election to Joe Biden. When he took office again in January after a four-year hiatus, he reversed Biden’s detrimental policies toward Israel, replacing them with the kind of staunch backing for the Jewish state that he had exhibited during his first term.
And though key figures in both of his administrations never doubted Israel’s biblical and other rights to Judea and Samaria, the issue of applying official sovereignty to the area has remained contentious. Nor has Trump suggested otherwise.
One doesn’t have to go back five years to be reminded that this is the case. Last month, for instance, he told reporters at the Oval Office, “I will not allow Israel to annex the West Bank, nope. Whether I spoke to [Netanyahu] or not—I did—but I’m not allowing Israel to annex the West Bank.”
He uttered this admonition a few days before Netanyahu’s visit to the White House, following the U.N. General Assembly in New York. He punctuated the statement by adding, “There’s been enough. It’s time to stop now.”
Another fact worth raising in this context is that Netanyahu opposed the Knesset vote, which barely passed since only a single parliamentarian from his Likud party cast a ballot in favor of the bill. In other words, Netanyahu is no more at odds with Trump on this score today than he was five years ago—and for a similar reason: America’s negotiations with Arab leaders.
Finally, the vote was merely preliminary. It now has to be brought before the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee for discussion before undergoing a second and third vote in the plenum. It’s a drawn-out process, which is why the whole episode was more symbolic than concrete—something that Netanyahu explained to Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, whose consecutive trips to Israel coincided with the parliamentary drama.
Whatever one’s position on sovereignty—or feelings about Netanyahu—there’s no excuse for obfuscating the timeline of Trump’s input on Israeli behavior.
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