The campaign being waged by leaders of the Yesha Council to annex parts of the West Bank is not only intensifying, but expanding in scope as well. What was once a campaign limited to pressuring Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has grown to encompass the Donald Trump administration and its leaders, until recently the settlers’ best friends. One possible consequence is that the settlers will end up distancing themselves and the religious Zionist movement that backs them from Netanyahu, pushing him into the arms of the Blue and White in a unity government.

Yossi Dagan, head of the Samaria Regional Council and considered the “foreign minister” of the settler movement, has emerged as the most strident proponent of the attacks on Netanyahu and the US administration. It all began when settlers erected a protest tent outside the Prime Minister’s Office on Feb. 4.

“We all respect the president of the United States, Trump, who leans in Israel’s favor much more than his predecessors,” said Dagan. “But Mr. Prime Minister, we elected you in an election in the State of Israel, we didn’t elect Trump, we didn’t even elect Jared Kushner. The State of Israel is not a banana republic. We won’t be a tool for the internal intrigue within the White House.”

The settlers blame infighting at the White House for the delay in annexing the territories, a provision of Trump’s peace plan. The disagreement involved US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman, who originally supported the immediate annexation of at least part of the territory, and White House seniors Jared Kushner and Jason Greenblatt, the architects of Trump's “deal of the century,” who opposed it. Friedman was eventually forced to walk back his earlier position and on Feb. 9 clarified that imposing Israeli sovereignty on any part of the territories before the upcoming election would put implementation of the peace plan at risk, and with it the US agreement to recognize the settlements and their annexation as part of the overall plan.