US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Wednesday that the Israeli Knesset's move towards the annexation of West Bank would threaten President Donald Trump's plan to end the conflict in Gaza.
"They passed a vote in the Knesset, but the president has made clear that’s not something we’d be supportive of right now," Rubio told reporters on the tarmac before boarding his flight to depart for Israel. "We think there’s potential for it to threaten the peace deal."
"They’re a democracy, people are going to have their votes, people are going to take these positions, but at this time we think it might be counterproductive," he added.
The 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 US Vice President JD Vance to Israel, a month after 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 favor of the bill, which would require a lengthy legislative process to ultimately pass.
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 UN'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occupation of Palestinian territories, including the West Bank, and its settlements there are illegal and should be withdrawn as soon as possible.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 recognizing 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.
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.
