Netanyahu rivals’ West Bank annexation bill ‘insults’ Vance

Vance left shortly before the arrival in Israel of US Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

Right-wing rivals of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu narrowly passed a West Bank annexation bill in first parliamentary reading, drawing a US rebuke as the allies advance a Gaza peace plan whose regional support hinges on acknowledging Palestinian territorial claims.

“I personally take some insult to it,” US Vice President JD Vance, wrapping up brainstorming visit to Israel, said in response to Wednesday’s 25-to-24 Knesset vote.

US President Donald Trump last month said he would not allow Israel to annex the West Bank — an area on which, along with the Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem, Palestinians want to establish an independent state.

In a Time magazine interview published on Thursday, Trump said a West Bank annexation “won’t happen because I gave my word to the Arab countries ... Israel would lose all of its support from the United States if that happened.”

The bill, which has to pass committee and three further debates for ratification, was submitted by a far-right lawmaker outside of Netanyahu’s conservative coalition. It would annex Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Among the yes votes were several coalition lawmakers. But most from the prime minister’s Likud party abstained.

Likud dismissed the new legislation as “opposition trolling, whose objective is the harm our relations with the United States.” A coalition official who declined to be identified because discussions aren’t public said Likud would use its committee clout to stop the bill’s passage.

In his first term, Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, incensing Palestinians and their supporters in the Arab and Muslim world. His current administration has been ambiguous on where it stands on Palestinian statehood, though it criticized European and other allies of Israel for unilaterally recognizing Palestine last month.

Officially, Trump has stuck with the US’s long-standing policy of only accepting statehood after an agreement is reached between the Palestinians and Israelis.

Israelis, however, have tacked hard-right since the Oct. 7, 2023 attack by the Palestinian Islamist faction Hamas, which triggered the war in Gaza and on several other regional fronts. In July 2024, the Knesset passed a resolution expressing formal opposition to the establishment of a Palestinian state. A year later, it passed a non-binding resolution calling for settlement annexation. Likud backed both.

Vance left shortly before the arrival in Israel of US Secretary of State Marco Rubio. In parallel, White House envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner have been shuttling among Israel, Saudi Arabia and UAE this week - to drum up support for a multi-national force which would disarm Hamas and stabilizing the Gaza Strip, Vance said.

Israel’s parliamentary opposition is a disparate collection of ultra-religious, centrist and Arab minority parties that finds it hard to challenge the coalition.

Netanyahu has his eye on reelection next year, and on right-wing constituencies’ scrutiny of his record in trying to apply Israeli sovereignty to West Bank settlements — which they deem to be a biblical birthright and a security buffer.

“True sovereignty will be attained not through a performative for-the-record bill, but through proper work on the ground and through generating the right statecraft conditions,” the Likud statement said.