In defiance of both Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s and the Knesset’s ruling Likud party, two bills aimed at an annexing the occupied West Bank limped through Israel’s parliament on Tuesday night.
US President Donald Trump simply stated that Israel “is not going to do anything with the West Bank” in response to the election news.
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Meanwhile, his vice president, JD Vance, went further and described the vote as “weird” and said, “I personally take some insult to it,” while being in Israel to protect the US-broke ceasefire earlier this month.
Since 1967, Israeli military occupation of the West Bank, along with East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, has continued. Israeli settlement construction has continued even though it is against international law and, in the case of settlement outposts, against Israeli law.
On Palestinian-occupied land, 250 illegal settlements are located in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, making up roughly 700,000 of the total number of Israeli settlers. The West Bank is home to about half a million of these.
Many members of Israel’s right-wing have long wanted to annex the West Bank, but this new bill has not yet been passed into law.
Zionists believe that formally annexing the West Bank would help them reclaim the biblical land of Greater Israel, which includes all of the occupied Palestinian territories as well as parts of Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Egypt. It serves as a cheap way for some to seize Palestinian land and obstruct any pending Palestinian statehood.
The Knesset approved “applying Israeli sovereignty to Judea, Samaria, and the Jordan Valley” in a symbolic motion in July. These are Israel’s names for the West Bank that are occupied. A month later, Israel announced the establishment of a new settlement, “settlement-plan-threatens-viability-of-future-palestinian-state”>E1,” that would connect occupied East Jerusalem to the expanding Maale Adumim settlement in the occupied West Bank, despite the motion’s lack of legal weight.
What was the subject of the most recent Israeli bills?
On Tuesday, the Knesset approved two separate bills: one that would legalize the Maale Adumim settlement and the other that would grant Israeli citizenship to all illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank.
The move was framed in biblical terms by its sponsor, far-right Knesset (MK) member Avi Maoz of the one-man Noam party, when introducing the second bill. Maoz addressed the Knesset, “The Holy One, blessed be He, gave the people of Israel the Land of Israel.” After two thousand years of exile, the phrase “settlement in the Land of Israel is the redemption and national revival” (p. 3).
What was the outcome of the votes?
Both bills passed the preliminary readings. Avigdor Lieberman, the leader of the opposition, sponsored the bill to annex Maale Adumim, which was defeated by 32 to 9. The bill’s broad scope for sovereignty was largely passed 25-24.
Nearly all Likud party lawmakers were boycotted, according to Israeli media, with just one MK supporting the motion.
The bills were backed and opposed by whom?
Netanyahu and Likud opposed both bills in accordance with the US administration, some of whose most senior figures are currently stationed in Israel to bolster the ceasefire agreement they brokered in early October.
Netanyahu has previously praised the idea of a “Greater Israel,” but his party called the votes “an additional provocation by the opposition aimed at deteriorating our relations with the US.”
Donald Trump, the US president, has stated that he will stop Israel from annexing the West Bank and that he will stop at all costs.
In a statement, it stated that “true sovereignty will be achieved not through a showy law for the record, but by proper work on the ground,” in response to rumors that Netanyahu’s government had given US too much authority.
Yuli Edelstein, a Likud MK, was the only candidate to win, which has since cost him his seat on the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.
However, some of Netanyahu’s coalition partners, including Itamar Ben-Gvir, the far-right National Security Minister, and Religious Zionist Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, both supported the measures.
The Knesset has spoken, Smotrich wrote in a post on X. The people have remarked. The time has come to grant our forefathers’ full sovereignty over all of Judea and Samaria, which are the result of peace, and to support peace efforts with our neighbors from a strong position.
אדוני ראש הממשלה,
הכנסת אמרה את דברה.
העם אמר את דברו.
הגיע העת להחלת ריבונות מלאה על כל שטחי יהודה ושומרון – נחלת אבותינו – ולקידום הסכמי שלום תמורת שלום עם שכנינו מתוך עוצמה.
🇮🇱
Benny Gantz and Yair Lapid, two opposition figures frequently portrayed in the European media as liberal or moderate, were also in favor of the bill’s annexation of Maale Adumim.
Does this matter in terms of timing?
It’s awkward for Netanyahu, Likud, and their American guests.
Israel’s media reported on the news on Thursday that any new strikes on Gaza would need to be authorized by the US. Trump stated in an interview with Time that he had informed the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he would not be permitted to annex the occupied West Bank.
Netanyahu has rebuffed claims that Israel has ascended to the US as a “client state.”
Despite this, Netanyahu has made every effort to accommodate US visitors, including US Vice President JD Vance, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Jared Kushner’s son-in-law, and special envoy Steve Witkoff, who called the Knesset bills “a very stupid political stunt.”
According to reports in The New York Times, US officials believe Netanyahu is looking for an excuse to break the president’s political commitment to a ceasefire, which he has heavily leveraged on his political capital.
They were there to “monitor a toddler,” as Vice President Vance put it at a press conference, and not to “monitor a toddler.”
Regarding the recent Knesset vote on Judea and Samaria’s sovereignty, JD Vance:
The West Bank will not be annexed by Israel, according to the statement, which was a very stupid political stunt. pic. https://twitter.com/hyWxm9z2EL
What comes next with the bills?
The bills must pass three more readings before being passed into law, and they will now be sent for further consideration to the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.
Netanyahu is unlikely to permit either bill to advance further, as the hard US position on stopping further Israeli aggression is shared by the majority of Israeli media.
Are these votes really that significant?
No legislation is anticipated to be passed unless Netanyahu, his governing coalition, and Washington oppose them. The votes represent yet another significant step in the gradual encroachment of Israeli control over Palestinian territory in the wider context of Israel’s continued occupation of Palestinian territory since 1967.
Rapid settlement expansion occurred during the decade immediately following the war of 1967, which was followed by East Jerusalem’s annexation in 1980. The Oslo Accords of 1993, which was touted as a liberal reform, tightened Israeli control elsewhere while the 2005 Gaza disengagement tightened it.
Source: Aljazeera
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