“The policy of the Trump administration is that the West Bank will not be annexed by Israel.” This is what US Vice President JD Vance has said about this Wednesday’s preliminary vote in the Knesset (Israeli Parliament) on the annexation of the West Bank before leaving Israel, a country where he arrived on Tuesday with the aim of saving the battered ceasefire agreed upon by Israel and Hamas.
“I asked someone about it and they told me that it was a symbolic vote to annex the West Bank,” said the vice president: “They told me that it was a political maneuver that had no practical meaning but rather a symbolic one.”
And he added: “Look, if it was a political maneuver, it was a very stupid political maneuver. And I personally feel a little offended by it. The West Bank is not going to be annexed by Israel. The Trump Administration’s policy is that the West Bank will not be annexed by Israel. That will continue to be our policy. And if people want to do symbolic votes, they can do that, but it certainly hasn’t bothered us. liked.”
After the reaction of the US vice president, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered the progress of bills to partially or totally annex the West Bank to stop until further notice, Haaretz reports. A brief statement from the prime minister’s office lamented that Wednesday’s Knesset vote was “a deliberate political provocation by the opposition to create discord during Vice President JD Vance’s visit.”
Furthermore, it highlights that “the two bills were promoted by opposition members of the Knesset” and that the Likud party (Netanyahu’s party that leads the Government) and “the main members of the coalition” did not vote in favor of the bills. “Without Likud support, these projects will go nowhere,” the statement states. However, it does not mention that the bill had the support of deputies from the government coalition, such as those from the Religious Zionist Party, Agudat Yisrael and Otzma Yehudit.
The US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, also warned this Thursday against the annexation of the West Bank before reaching Israel, stating that the measure voted by the Israeli Parliament threatens the Gaza agreement.
“It is a vote in the Knesset, but obviously I think the president has made it clear that it is not something that we support at this time, and we believe that it could jeopardize the peace agreement,” Rubio told reporters.
“They are a democracy, they are going to hold their votes and people are going to adopt these positions. But at this moment, it is something that we… believe could be counterproductive,” he said, according to AFP. Asked about the increase in violence by radical Israeli settlers against Palestinians in the West Bank, he responded: “We are concerned about anything that threatens to destabilize what we have built.”
Rubio He travels to Israel, where he will be until next Saturday, to continue the implementation of President Donald Trump’s plan for Gaza, as confirmed by the Department in a statement.
Knesset vote
The Israeli Parliament (the Knesset) approved this Wednesday in a preliminary reading with 25 votes in favor and 24 against a proposal to annex the occupied Palestinian territory of the West Bank.
This first step precedes three other votes that will be necessary in the Knesset to convert this bill into law, which reads: “the State of Israel will apply its laws and sovereignty to the settlement areas in Judea and Samaria, to establish the status of these areas as an inseparable part of the sovereign State of Israel.”
This preliminary vote has coincided with the visit to Israel of the Vice President of the United States, JD Vance, who has supervised the ceasefire plan in Gaza together with the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and senior military officials.
“The time has come to apply full sovereignty over all the territories of Judea and Samaria (the West Bank), the inheritance of our ancestors, and to promote peace agreements in exchange for peace with our neighbors from a position of strength,” the Minister of Finance, the far-right and settler, Bezalel Smotrich, celebrated in X.
The Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben Gvir, also from the extreme right and a settler, also showed his enthusiasm for this proposal: “The time for sovereignty has come now!”
In mid-September, both ministers already demanded that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu annex the West Bank in response to the recognition of the Palestinian State by more than a dozen countries, including the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia.
Palestine does not have territorial continuity, and while the political branch of Hamas ruled in Gaza, the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) remains in the West Bank, headed by Mahmoud Abbas.
Source: www.eldiario.es
