WASHINGTON/TEL AVIV: US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said that the Israeli Knesset’s move towards the annexation of the occupied West Bank would threaten President Donald Trump’s plan to end the conflict in Gaza, which has produced a shaky ceasefire so far.
“I mean, that’s a vote in the – yeah, that’s a vote in the Knesset, but obviously I think the president’s made clear that’s not something we’d be supportive of right now, and we think it’s potentially threatening to the peace deal,” Rubio told reporters late on Wednesday before leaving for Israel.
Rubio’s visit to Israel, announced by the State Department on Wednesday, is the latest by a senior U.S. official seeking to keep alive a fragile truce between Israel and Palestinian group Hamas.
U.S. Vice President JD Vance arrived in Israel this week and met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday. He is due to meet Defense Minister Israel Katz and Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer on Thursday before departing.
The State Department said Rubio was visiting Israel to support the implementation of Trump’s 20-point plan to end the Gaza war.
A bill applying Israeli law to the occupied West Bank, a move tantamount to annexation of land that Palestinians want for a state, won preliminary approval from Israel’s parliament on Wednesday.
There are around 700,000 Israeli settlers living in settlements across the Israeli-occupied West Bank. The United Nations and much of the international community consider the settlements illegal under international law.
Israel’s government, however, cites biblical and historical connections to the West Bank, territory that it regards as disputed, and opposes the establishment of a Palestinian state.
The settlements are an explosive issue that has for decades been seen as a major obstacle to Middle East peace.
The vote was the first of four needed to pass the law and coincided with Vance’s visit to Israel, a month after President Donald Trump said that he would not allow Israel to annex the occupied West Bank.
Netanyahu’s Likud party did not support the legislation, which was put forward by lawmakers outside his ruling coalition and passed by a vote of 25 in favour and 24 against out of 120 lawmakers. A second bill by an opposition party proposing the annexation of the Maale Adumim settlement near Jerusalem passed by 31 votes to 9.
Netanyahu’s government had been mulling annexation as a response to a string of its Western allies recognising a Palestinian state in September, but appeared to scrap the move after Trump objected.
Settlement building has been expanding rapidly since 2022 when Netanyahu’s government came to power. It is the most right-wing in Israel’s history, featuring several ultra-nationalist lawmakers.
The UAE, the most prominent Arab country to establish ties with Israel under the so-called Abraham Accords brokered by Trump in his first term in office, last month warned that annexation in the West Bank was a red line for the Gulf state.
Senior Emirati official Anwar Gargash, a diplomatic adviser to the UAE president, told the Reuters NEXT Gulf Summit in Abu Dhabi on Wednesday that he believed the Gulf state had averted annexation.
The United Arab Emirates’ national security adviser, Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, discussed on Wednesday developments related to the ceasefire in Gaza and efforts to consolidate it with U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, Emirati state news agency WAM reported.
The meeting in the Gulf country came after a visit by Witkoff and Kushner to Israel.
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