As Trump opposes West Bank annexation, Israel votes on applying law to occupied territory during J.D. Vance visit

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. The vote was the first of four needed to pass the law, and it coincided with the visit of US Vice-President J.D. Vance to Israel, a month after President Donald Trump said that he would not allow Israel to annex the West Bank. “I will not allow Israel to annex the West Bank,” Trump told reporters at the White House in September. “It’s not going to happen.” ... Some members in Netanyahu’s coalition – from National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir’s Jewish Power party and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s Religious Zionism faction – voted in favour of the bill, which would require a lengthy legislative process to ultimately pass. Far-right ministers have openly called for the annexation of the Palestinian territory, occupied by Israel since 1967. “Mr Prime Minister. The Knesset has spoken. The people have spoken,” Smotrich posted on social media. “The time has come to impose full sovereignty over all of Judea and Samaria – the inheritance of our ancestors – and to promote peace agreements in exchange for peace with our neighbours with strength,” he said, using the Israeli Biblical term for the West Bank. The United Nations’ highest court in 2024 said that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories, including the West Bank, and its settlements there are illegal and should be withdrawn as soon as possible. Israel argues the territories it captured in the 1967 war are not occupied in legal terms because they are on disputed lands, but the United Nations and most of the international community regard them as occupied territory. 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’s objection. ... 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 of 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 the Gulf state believed it had averted annexation. Excluding Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem, the West Bank is home to around three million Palestinians, as well as more than 500,000 Israelis living in settlements. Since the war in Gaza began in October 2023, violence has also surged in the West Bank.