The next steps in shaping a peaceful, postwar Gaza remain vague, but the Trump administration has made one thing clear. Any Israeli attempt to annex parts of the occupied West Bank will not be tolerated.
President Trump drove the point home in an interview with Time magazine published on Thursday.
“It won’t happen because I gave my word to the Arab countries,” he said of West Bank annexation. “Israel would lose all of its support from the United States if that happened.”
The day before the interview came out, the Israeli Knesset, or Parliament, passed two largely symbolic votes in favor of annexing land in the West Bank, a territory that much of the world envisions as the core of a future Palestinian state.
The United States is Israel’s most important ally and the preliminary votes clearly raised the heckles of the Trump administration, which has worked hard to keep its Arab partners to the Gaza deal on board.
Vice President JD Vance, who was wrapping up a two-day visit to Israel on Thursday, vented his anger at the vote. He said someone had told him that this was a symbolic political stunt with no practical significance.
“If it was a political stunt, it was a very stupid political stunt, and I personally take some insult to it,” he said. “The West Bank is not going to be annexed by Israel. The policy of the Trump administration is that the West Bank will not be annexed by Israel.”
The Wednesday votes took place on the same day he arrived in the country.
The messages left Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu scrambling to distance himself on Thursday from the votes that angered the U.S. administration.
“The Knesset vote on annexation was a deliberate political provocation by the opposition to sow discord during Vice President JD Vance’s visit to Israel,” he said in a statement issued in English.
The motions, put forward on Wednesday by two right-wing members of the parliamentary opposition, were largely symbolic and would need several more votes and much committee work to pass into law.
But talk of annexation has gained more urgency in Israel in recent weeks since countries, including some of Israel’s traditionally close allies, took the step of formally recognizing Palestinian statehood.
The political maneuvering came at a sensitive time, amid a series of visits to Israel by U.S. officials intended to shore up the fragile Gaza cease-fire that came into effect barely two weeks ago after two years of war.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, about to board a plane to Israel after the Knesset votes, told reporters that annexation was not something the administration “would be supportive of right now.” Such moves could potentially endanger the Gaza cease-fire deal, he warned.
The administration’s plan for ending the war in Gaza includes as a goal an eventual, credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood.
Mr. Netanyahu of Israel opposes the establishment Palestinian state but came out forcefully against the Knesset votes that brought U.S. pressure.
Without the support of his conservative Likud party, he said, “these bills are unlikely to go anywhere.”
Mr. Netanyahu leads the most right-wing and religiously conservative coalition in Israel’s history. Key elements of it want to annex large parts of the West Bank and members of the ultranationalists parties that help make up the coalition, including several ministers on whose support Mr. Netanyahu depends, voted for the annexation bills on Wednesday.
Most of the world views Jewish settlements in the West Bank as a violation of international law.
The hard-line opposition members who presented the bills have their own beefs against Mr. Netanyahu. And other centrist members of the opposition exploited the votes on Wednesday to embarrass the prime minister and expose splits in his coalition.
Adding to the sense of political chaos in Israel, Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s far-right finance minister and a staunch advocate for annexation, insulted Saudi Arabia, a regional power that Mr. Trump and Mr. Netanyahu have long hoped will normalize relations with Israel.
If the price of such normalization is a Palestinian state, Mr. Smotrich said at a conference on Thursday, addressing Saudi Arabia, “No thank you. Keep riding camels in the sands of the Saudi desert.”
After his remarks were slammed by members of the coalition and the opposition alike, Mr. Smotrich posted a video on social media expressing some regret. He said his “unplanned” statement about Saudi Arabia “was certainly out of place, and I lament it.”
But he doubled down on annexation.
“Just as I do not seek, God forbid, to offend the Saudis, I expect them not to hurt me, or to hurt us,” he said.
Referring to the West Bank by its biblical names, he added, “Those who dispute our living and very deep ties to the regions of our homeland in Judea and Samaria hurt us.”
Johnatan Reiss Reiss contributed reporting.
Isabel Kershner, a Times correspondent in Jerusalem, has been reporting on Israeli and Palestinian affairs since 1990.
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