Israel’s parliament advances bill to annex occupied West Bank

A bill imposing Israeli sovereignty on the occupied West Bank would be a flagrant violation of international law, according to Israel’s parliament’s decision to vote to approve it.

In the first of four necessary votes to pass the bill into law, lawmakers in the 120-seat Knesset voted 25-24 on Tuesday to advance it in the face of opposition from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Likud party.

The bill was approved in a preliminary reading, according to a Knesset statement that referenced Judea and Samaria (West Bank) as the subject of the bill’s application of the State of Israel’s sovereignty. The Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee will then examine it for further discussion.

The vote was held during US Vice President JD Vance’s visit to Israel to bolster the ceasefire agreement in Gaza, which came one month after US President Donald Trump said he would not allow Israel to annex the occupied West Bank.

The votes, according to Likud, are “an additional provocation by the opposition intended to harm our relations with the United States,” Likud said in a statement.

True sovereignty will be achieved through diligent work on the ground, the statement declared. “Not a showy law for the record, but rather.

According to UN resolutions, an annexation of the occupied West Bank would effectively eliminate the possibility of a two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Voting in the Likud was decisive by the party.

The bill was supported by some members of Netanyahu’s coalition, including Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s Religious Zionism faction and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir’s Jewish Power party.

In a post on X, Smotrich wrote, “The people have spoken.

In accordance with biblical definitions for the West Bank, he said, “The time has come to apply full sovereignty to all the territories of Judea and Samaria, the inheritance of our forefathers, and to promote peace agreements in exchange for peace with our neighbours, from a position of strength.”

The far-right Noam Party, which does not belong to the governing coalition, is the leader of the bill, Avi Maoz.

Most Likud lawmakers voted abstained or did not show up for the vote, but Yuli Edelstein, a member, defied Netanyahu and cast the decisive vote in favor of the bill.

In a post on X, he wrote, “At this very moment, Israeli sovereignty over our homeland is the order of the day.”

A second bill from an opposition party that called for the Maale Adumim settlement to be annexated also got passed.

The international community had warned that a significant settlement project between Maale Adumim and Jerusalem in the occupied West Bank would undermine the viability of a future Palestinian state.

“Brutal violation of international law”

Hamas and Jordan swiftly condemned the votes.

The Palestinian organization claimed in a statement that the bills show “the colonial occupation’s ugly face.”

The organization claims that the occupation’s desperate attempts to annex West Bank property are unfounded and unlawful.

The Knesset’s preliminary approval of the two draft laws was “condemned in the strongest terms,” according to Jordan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates.

The statement on X reads, “This is regarded as a flagrant violation of international law, an undermining of the two-state solution, and an infringement on the Palestinian people’s inalienable right to self-determination and the establishment of an independent, sovereign state based on the borders of June 4, 1967, with Jerusalem as its capital,” the statement read.

The Ministry put forth the claim that Israel is not a sovereign state in the occupied Palestinian territories.

In the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, more than 700,000 Israelis reside in illegal settlements on Palestinian land.

International law prohibits all of Israel’s settlements in the occupied West Bank.

The occupation of Palestinian territories, including the West Bank, and its settlements there should be ended as soon as possible, according to the UN’s principal court in 2024.

Members of Netanyahu’s coalition have been asking for Israel to officially annex some of the occupied West Bank for years, and Netanyahu’s government had been considering doing so in response to several of its Western allies’ acceptance of a Palestinian state in September.

After Trump made it clear that such a move would be unacceptable, it had started to appear to back away from the plans.

Rhetorical gesture:

Israeli political analyst Ori Goldberg claimed that the vote was a part of the Knesset’s “primarily performative” criticism of Netanyahu over the Gaza ceasefire agreement in response to accusations that the US and Middle Eastern powers had forced Israel to comply with it.

The Knesset passed the first stage of a bill today that proposes imposing Israeli control over the West Bank, which is technically meant to resemble an annexation. However, he claimed that this was a rhetorical gesture.

Source: Aljazeera