Trump brushed off Israel’s bid to annex West Bank
US President Donald Trump on Thursday dismissed an effort by some Israeli lawmakers to push forward with annexation of the occupied West Bank, saying Israel is “not going to do anything with the West Bank.”
A bill applying Israeli law to the West Bank, a move tantamount to annexation of a territory that Palestinians seek for part of a future independent state, won preliminary approval by Israeli lawmakers on Wednesday.
US Vice President JD Vance said earlier during a visit to Israel that Trump would oppose annexation of the West Bank and it would not happen.
Asked by reporters about the vote, Vance said: “If it was a political stunt, it is a very stupid one, and I personally take some insult to it.”
Later on Thursday, Trump also brushed aside the idea of annexation, which he had previously insisted he would not allow.
“Don’t worry about the West Bank,” he said in response to a reporter’s question at an unrelated White House event. “Israel’s not going to do anything with the West Bank.”
Vance spoke after Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned that steps toward annexing the territory, which Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war, could endanger Trump’s plan to end the Gaza war, which has yielded a shaky ceasefire so far.
They were part of a parade of senior US officials who flew to Israel this week.
“The policy of President Trump is that the West Bank will not be annexed. This will always be our policy,” Vance said at the end of a two-day visit to Israel.
The vote was sponsored by a far-right opposition lawmaker who until recently was in the ruling right-wing coalition, and backed by ultranationalists National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich.
The reading passed by a vote of 25-24 out of 120 lawmakers. It was the first of four votes needed to pass the law.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office later said that the vote was a “deliberate political provocation” that aimed to sow division during Vance’s visit.
Netanyahu’s Likud party did not vote for the bill, it said, adding that without its support, attempts to legislate the annexation of the West Bank were “unlikely to go anywhere”.