[IMPORTANT] Hamas launches foot assault against settlements.

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IDF troops attempted to dismantle the illegal outpost Givat Tzur Harel but were pelted with stones by residents, leaving one soldier wounded, Israeli media reported on Tuesday.

About 50 settlers gathered to attack the IDF soldiers, injuring one soldier who was taken to hospital with head injuries, according to Israel Hayom.

Two people were later arrested as a result of the violence.

The IDF later confirmed that a soldier had been injured by a glass bottle thrown by an Israeli citizen and that he was then taken to hospital for medical treatment.

The IDF also confirmed that "dozens" of Israeli citizens were involved in the stone-throwing directed at IDF troops.

A perennial problem
Troops were present in the illegal outpost as it had been ordered dismantled and were there to complete the destruction of the settlement.

The outpost has been destroyed and rebuilt numerous times over the past two decades since it was first established.

The settlement was the cause of a disagreement between the IDF and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich after the IDF ordered the settlement dismantled in July, but the move was blocked by Smotrich, who also serves as the minister responsible for civilian activity in the West Bank.

At that time, residents also attacked IDF and police officers who were there to dismantle the settlement

US President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to be the next US ambassador to Israel said the incoming administration could support the annexation of the West Bank, though such a decision would be out of his hands.

Mike Huckabee, a politician and Evangelical Christian leader with a history of strong support for Israeli building in the West Bank, was named Tuesday as Trump’s nominee for the post, drawing plaudits from settlement leaders.

Speaking to Israel’s Army Radio Wednesday morning, Huckabee was asked whether annexation would be a possibility after Trump takes office in January.

“Well of course,” Huckabee answered. “I won’t make the policy, I will carry out the policy of the president.”

The former Arkansas governor also did not rule out the possibility of Israel rebuilding settlements in the Gaza Strip when asked.

“Well I haven’t had time to process that,” he said. “I don’t want to make any comments about policy because those won’t be mine to make.”

Support for annexation of the West Bank or the return of settlements in Gaza would mark a significant break with the current US administration, which has repeatedly spoken out against settlement activity as a barrier to a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The administration has also warned repeatedly against resettling Israeli civilians in Gaza, which Israel evacuated in 2005.

Trump’s first ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, was also an ardent supporter of West Bank settlements, and the administration largely shied away from criticizing Israeli building in the West Bank.

A peace plan rolled out by Trump toward the end of his term was interpreted by Friedman and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a green light to annex the West Bank, though the effort never got off the ground.

Since Trump’s election last week, pro-settlement forces in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition have repeatedly raised hopes that Israel will annex the territory and win Washington’s backing for the move.

On Monday, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich declared that 2025 would be “the year of sovereignty in [the West Bank],” thanks to Trump’s return to office, and National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir last week said that “this is the time for sovereignty.”

However, at least two officials in Trump’s previous administration have warned senior Israeli ministers not to assume that the president-elect will support Israel annexing the West Bank in his second term, three sources familiar with the conversations told The Times of Israel.

Huckabee has called Israel’s claim to the West Bank stronger than American ties to Manhattan and laid bricks in 2018 as ground was broken on a new housing complex in the settlement of Efrat.

During the Army Radio interview, he noted that he was “a frequent visitor to Judea and Samaria,” using a Biblical term for the West Bank favored by those on the right wing.

“I also very much believe that the people of Israel deserve a secure and safe country and anything I can do that will help accommodate that is going to be a great privilege for me,” he said.

Aside from backing settlements, a term he says he abhors, Huckabee is also a bitter opponent of Palestinian nationalism.

“There’s really no such thing as a Palestinian,” the former Baptist minister told a rabbi in Massachusetts in 2008, according to The New Yorker. “That’s been a political tool to try to force land away from Israel.”

Eighty-eight Democratic lawmakers have signed onto a letter urging US President Joe Biden to sanction far-right Israeli ministers Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich before he departs the White House in January.

Smotrich and Ben Gvir are “driving policies that promote settler violence, weaken the Palestinian Authority, facilitate de facto and de jure annexation, and destabilize the West Bank,” the House and Senate lawmakers argue in a letter sent on October 29 but was not made public until Thursday.

The Biden administration has weighed the unprecedented step in recent months, but has thus far held off on the move, with the president feeling that the US should not be sanctioning officials from a democratic ally, American officials have told The Times of Israel.

Internal calls to sanction Ben Gvir and Smotrich have recently grown, however, as settler violence has continued unabated and Israel advances steps aimed at further expanding its presence and grip on the West Bank. The sanctions would likely be implemented through an executive order Biden signed last February aimed at targeting Israeli and Palestinian extremists destabilizing the West Bank.

Ben Gvir and Smotrich have called for Israel to formally annex much of the territory now that Trump has been elected, given that he and his aides have been less critical — if not outright supportive — of Israel’s presence in the disputed territory.

But a move to sanction them would almost certainly be reversed by President-elect Donald Trump and it also comes with significant questions regarding enforcement. If Israel continues to pay the ministerial salaries of Smotrich and Ben Gvir, the government would be exposed to sanctions of its own, which is likely not the administration’s intention, given its support for the US-Israel relationship more broadly.

“Government leaders instigating violence must be subject to US sanctions… With radical officials in the Netanyahu government continuing to enable settler violence and enact annexationist policies, it is clear that further sanctions are urgently needed,” the letter states.

The signatories are largely made up of some of the more progressive Democrats in Congress, but they also include the more moderate Senator Chris Coons of Delaware — a close Biden ally — as well as Representative Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, the top Democratic appropriator who, this year, received the endorsement of a PAC affiliated with the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC, and Illinois Senator Dick Durbin, the number-two Democrat in the Senate. Eight Jewish lawmakers are also among the signatories