“Israel won’t do anything in the West Bank, don’t be afraid,” Donald Trump said at the White House in response to a French reporter’s question whether the Knesset vote for sovereignty over that territory was a challenge to him.
The question arises from the fact that the right-wing rivals of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have narrowly passed a West Bank annexation bill in the first parliamentary reading, prompting criticism from the US, while the allies promote a peace plan for Gaza whose regional support depends on the recognition of Palestinian territorial claims.
“Personally, I consider it an insult,” said US Vice-President J.D. Vance, at the end of his visit to Israel, in response to Wednesday’s vote in the Knesset, with 25 votes in favour and 24 against.
Last month, Trump declared that he would not allow Israel to annex the West Bank, an area where, along with the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, Palestinians want to establish an independent state.
“Don’t worry about the West Bank,” Trump said Thursday at the White House, responding to a question about the vote. “Israel’s not going to do anything with the West Bank, OK?”
In an interview with Time Magazine published on Thursday morning, Trump said that the annexation of the West Bank ‘will not happen because I gave my word to the Arab countries… Israel would lose all the support of the United States if that happened’.
The bill, which has to pass committee and three other debates for ratification, was presented by a far-right MP from outside Netanyahu’s conservative coalition. It would annex Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Among the votes in favour were several coalition MPs. But most of Likud, the prime minister’s party, abstained.
Likud dismissed the new law as ‘trolling by the opposition, whose goal is to damage our relations with the US’. A coalition official who preferred to remain anonymous because the discussions are not public said that Likud will use its influence in the committee to prevent the bill’s passage.
During his first term in office, Trump recognised Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, angering the Palestinians and their supporters in the Arab and Muslim world. His current administration has been ambiguous about the position to be taken on the Palestinian state, although he has criticised Israel’s European and other allies for unilaterally recognising Palestine last month.
Officially, Trump has maintained the long-standing US policy of accepting the State of Palestine only after reaching an agreement between Palestinians and Israelis.
The Israelis, however, veered towards an extreme right-wing position after the 7 October 2023 attack by the Palestinian Islamist faction Hamas, which triggered war in Gaza and on several other regional fronts. In July 2024, the Knesset passed a resolution expressing formal opposition to the creation of a Palestinian state. A year later, it passed a non-binding resolution calling for the annexation of settlements. Likud supported both proposals.
Vance left Israel shortly before US Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s arrival in Israel. In parallel, White House envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner shuttled between Israel, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates this week to gather support for a multinational force that would disarm Hamas and stabilise the Gaza Strip, Vance said.
A Palestinian child died this morning from wounds sustained during an operation by Israeli forces in the Askar camp in Nablus, in the occupied West Bank, Al Jazeera reports, citing its correspondents on the spot.
According to the same source, Israeli forces also raided the city of Aqaba, north of Tubas, also in the West Bank, and made several arrests in the cities of Hebron and Tal.
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