JERUSALEM (Reuters) -A bill applying Israeli law to the occupied West Bank, a move tantamount to annexation of land which 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 U.S. Vice President JD Vance to Israel, a month after President Donald Trump said that he would not allow Israel to annex the West Bank.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party did not support the legislation, which was put forth by lawmakers outside his ruling coalition and passed by a vote of 25-24 out of 120 lawmakers. A second bill by an opposition party proposing the annexation of the Maale Adumim settlement passed by 31-9.
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.
ANNEXATION CALLS, ABRAHAM ACCORDS
Members of Netanyahu’s coalition have been calling for years for Israel to formally annex parts of the West Bank, territory to which Israel cites biblical and historical ties.
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.
The U.N.’s 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occupation of Palestinian territories, including the West Bank, and its settlements there are illegal and should be withdrawn as soon as possible.
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 Palestinian foreign ministry said Israel will have no sovereignty over Palestinian land, condemning the Knesset’s move.
“The Ministry of Foreign Affairs affirms that the occupied Palestinian territory in the West Bank, including Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, is a single geographical unit over which Israel has no sovereignty,” it said.
Palestinian militant group Hamas said in a statement on Wednesday that the Israeli votes on the West Bank and Maale Adumim bills reflected “the ugly face of the colonial occupation”.
“We affirm that the occupation’s frantic attempts to annex West Bank lands are invalid and illegitimate,” it said.
Hamas has been trying to reassert its presence in the Gaza Strip after being pounded and severely weakened during two years of war with Israel.
The Palestinian Authority exercises limited self-rule in some areas of the occupied West Bank.
Netanyahu himself has not been explicit about annexation since a past election pledge was scrapped in 2020 in favour of normalising ties with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.
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 advisor to the UAE president, told the Reuters NEXT Gulf Summit in Abu Dhabi on Wednesday that maximalist views on the Palestinian issues are no longer valid.
(Reporting by Maayan Lubell; Editing by Sharon Singleton, Aidan Lewis and Diane Craft)
