WASHINGTON — Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich will head to Washington in the coming days to meet with U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and discuss economic and political cooperation, Smotrich’s spokesperson said Thursday.
Smotrich was invited by Bessent in a call two weeks ago, said Smotrich’s spokesperson, Eitan Fuld, and they’ll meet around the weekend of March 8-9.
It would mark the first in-person talks between Smotrich, a fervent settler advocate at the helm of Israel’s settlement planning apparatus, and a Trump administration official — and it could have major implications for U.S. policy toward the settlements, which the international community largely considers illegal.
“We’re strengthening the ties, the working relations,” Fuld said. “There are also professional issues on the agenda.”
Smotrich, a key partner in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition, supports the reoccupation of Gaza, the rebuilding of Jewish settlements that were removed in 2005, and what he describes as the voluntary migration of large numbers of Palestinians out of the territory.
He’s coming to the U.S. after President Donald Trump, on his first day in office, canceled sanctions against extremist Israeli settlers accused of violence against Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
The reversal of the Biden administration’s sanctions set the tone for a presidency that has been more tolerant of Israel’s expansion of settlements and of violence toward Palestinians. In Trump’s previous term he lavished support on Israel, and the Republican has again surrounded himself with aides who back the settlers.
Most recently, Trump has proposed expelling more than 2 million Palestinians from Gaza and transforming the strip into a “Riviera.” On Wednesday, he posted an artificial intelligence-generated video on his Truth Social platform envisioning Gaza as a resort-style destination including a golden statute of him.
Smotrich has called for Israel to occupy Gaza and annex the West Bank, and he urged Netanyahu to advocate Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank when the prime minister visited Washington earlier this month.
Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Mideast war and has built about 130 settlements and dozens of settlement outposts in a bid to cement its control over the territory. The Palestinians seek the area as the heartland of a future state and say the presence of settlements makes independence impossible.
Smotrich maintained a fractured relationship with President Joe Biden’s Democratic administration, which sanctioned more than a dozen Israelis who the administration said acted violently toward Palestinians in the West Bank.
Smotrich, who lives in the West Bank settlement of Kedumim, frequently angered Democratic leaders, particularly by imposing financial measures taken to weaken the Palestinian Authority, the body that governs semi-autonomous zones of the West Bank.
He signed a one-month extension to an agreement allowing Israeli banks to correspond with Palestinian banks last October, hours before the deal was slated to expire.
Ultimately, the Israeli Cabinet in December approved a one-year extension of the banking relationship between Israeli and Palestinian banks after then-Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and seven of her foreign counterparts sent a letter to Netanyahu expressing concern over the possible collapse of the Palestinian economy if Smotrich failed to renew the agreement.
Representatives from the U.S. Treasury, the White House and the Palestinian Monetary Authority did not respond to The Associated Press’ requests for comment.
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Frankel contributed to this report from Jerusalem.