US Secretary of State Marco Rubio
The Israeli Parliament still has to vote three more times to formally annex the illegally occupied territories in the West Bank. The US is against the idea and points out risks to the truce in Gaza.
The Israeli parliament (Knesset) approved this Wednesday, in a preliminary reading, a proposal to annex occupied Palestinian territory of the West Bank by the difference of one vote.
“The bill to apply sovereignty to the territories of Judea and Samaria was approved in preliminary reading by a majority of 25 in favor and 24 against”, announced the 120-member Knesset, according to Spanish news agency EFE.
Judea and Samaria is the Israeli administrative designation for much of the West Bank, rather than the name given by Jordan to the west bank of the Jordan River, when it annexed Palestinian territory between 1950 and the Israeli occupation in 1967.
This vote is the first step that precedes three other votes necessary for the Israeli parliament to convert the project into law.
“The State of Israel will apply its laws and sovereignty to settlement areas in Judea and Samaria, to establish the status of these areas as an inseparable part of the sovereign State of Israel”, the bill reads.
The legislative project was proposed by the leader and only deputy of the Noam party, Avigdor Maoz, who alluded to the idea of “Greater Israel”which erases the Palestinian territories from the map, during the parliamentary debate.
“The Lord, blessed be he, gave the Land of Israel to the people of Israel,” he explained.
The preliminary vote coincided with the visit to Israel of the Vice President of the United States, JD Vance, who analyzed the ceasefire plan in Gaza with 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 heritage of our ancestors”, applauded the Minister of Finance, the ultra-rightist and settler, Bezalel Smotrich, on social media.
Smotrich added that it is time to “promote peace-for-peace agreements” with Israel’s neighbors.”from a position of strength”.
The Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben Gvir, also far-right and a settler, was equally pleased with the bill.
“The time for sovereignty has now arrived,” he wrote on social media.
The two ministers had already demanded that Netanyahu annex the West Bank in September in response to the recognition of the Palestinian state by more than a dozen countries, including Portugal, France, United Kingdom, Canada and Australia.
Smotrich (Religious Zionist Party, also known as Tkuma) and Ben Gvir (Otzma Yehudit, Jewish Power) are partners with Netanyahu’s Likud, in the right-wing and far-right government coalition in power since the 2022 elections.
A Palestine does not have territorial continuity and, while the political arm of Hamas governed in the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian National Authority (ANP), led by Mahmoud Abbas, remains in the West Bank.
Headquartered in Ramallah, the ANP is recognized by the international community as a representative of the Palestinians.
Since the second Oslo Agreement of 1995, Israel has had military and civil control over the so-called Area C of the West Bank, which equivalent to 60% of the territory.
The ANP has full control of Area A and civilian control of Area B, where it shares security control with Israel.
Furthermore, there are hundreds of Israeli military checkpoints throughout the West Bank.
There is also a licensing system in place that does not allow free movement of Palestinians between cities and prohibits many from entering Jerusalem, among other cities.
Threat to the ceasefire in Gaza
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned that the vote in the Israeli parliament on bills aimed at extending Israeli sovereignty in the West Bank could threaten the truce in Gaza.
“I think the President [norte-americano Donald Trump] guaranteed that It’s not something we can support at this moment”, Rubio declared to journalists on Wednesday as he left for Israel, where he is expected today.
This would threaten the ceasefire and it would be counterproductivesaid the head of diplomacy of the United States, one day after the Israeli parliament (Knesset) approved, in a preliminary reading, a proposal to annex the occupied Palestinian territory of the West Bank.
Rubio’s reaction comes after, in September, Trump assured that he will not allow Israel to annex the occupied territories. “I will not allow Israel to annex the West Bank. No. I will not allow it. That will not happen,” he said.
