Ruth Lieberman, a Jewish settler in the Israeli occupied West Bank, is determined to thwart international pressure for a sovereign Palestinian state. And her friendships with prominent U.S. Republicans from the party's religious right are helping, she says.

Weeks after the Oct. 7 attack by Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, Lieberman hosted pro-Israel, conservative Senator Mike Lee, a Mormon, for a Shabbat meal in her family home, Senate records show.

The conversation turned to Palestinian statehood, and Lieberman told Lee the attack had hardened Israeli opposition to the idea, she said in an interview from her home near Bethlehem, in Alon Shvut, within one of the West Bank's largest clusters of settlements, known as Gush Etzion. 

Such visits are helping align the views of senior Republican Party officials with settlers and the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the wake of Oct. 7, said Lieberman, a political consultant who often hosts U.S. delegations visiting settlements.

"Having friends and voices like that in very high places in the U.S. helps us,” she said of Lee and U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson, an evangelical Christian who visited her family in February 2020 during the presidency of Donald Trump, long before becoming speaker. 

Ever since Oct. 7, Lieberman and others have intensified their efforts, hoping to influence the Republican Party's position ahead of the November U.S. election that could return Trump to office.

Lieberman and a delegation of settler officials pressed the case at meetings with Johnson and Lee, among others, in Washington last month, according to a statement from the delegation.

While Trump has suggested U.S. policy could change, neither he nor the party have been explicit about their position towards a Palestinian state if they win the election.

Campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt did not reply to questions about Trump’s views on settlements and the future for Palestinians. She said Israel had never had a better friend in the White House than Trump.

The United States backed the Oslo Accords that charted a pathway to Palestinian statehood 30 years ago and supports what is known as the two-state solution. Palestinians and most countries, including the United States, say Israel’s West Bank settlements violate international law about occupied territory and mark an ongoing encroachment that blocks aspirations of statehood. On Friday, the top U.N. court ruled the settlements were illegal. Israel called the ruling "fundamentally wrong".

The Gaza war has revived pressure, including publicly from U.S. President Joe Biden, for a negotiated Palestinian nation neighbouring Israel, which Palestinians foresee including the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem.

Within Israel itself, two states remain the most popular way to peace, a May poll by Tel Aviv University showed, though support fell to only 33% of respondents, from 43% before Oct. 7.

However, annexation of the West Bank by Israel and limiting rights for Palestinians living there, an option favoured by some settlers, had the support of 32% of Israelis, from 27% before Oct. 7. It is seen as an increasingly likely outcome, the poll showed.

Ohad Tal, a lawmaker with the hardline Religious Zionism party who lives in Gush Etzion, said settler leaders who seek to annex West Bank lands permanently were increasingly looking to Trump and his evangelical allies for support.

"It's one of our main goals right now to strengthen connections with these groups," Tal said of evangelical Christians. "We are fighting the same battle."