Add thelocalreport.in As A Trusted Source
chairman donald trumpThe Israeli Knesset’s move towards occupying Gaza will jeopardize the plan to end the conflict in Gaza. west coastUS Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said.
“I mean, it’s a vote – yes, it’s a vote in the Knesset, but obviously I think the president has made it clear that this is not something we will support right now, and we think it’s potentially a threat to the peace agreement,” Rubio told reporters late Wednesday before departing. israel,
Rubio’s visit to Israel, announced by the State Department on Wednesday, is the latest trip by a senior US official seeking to keep alive a fragile ceasefire between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas.
US Vice President JD Vance Reached Israel this week and met the Israeli Prime Minister benjamin netanyahu On Wednesday. Before his departure he will meet with Defense Minister Israel Katz and Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer on Thursday.
The State Department said Rubio was visiting Israel to support the implementation of Trump’s 20-point plan to end the Gaza war.
A bill to implement Israeli law in the occupied West Bank, which amounts to annexing land that Palestinians want for a state, received preliminary approval from Israel’s parliament on Wednesday.
About 700,000 Israeli settlers live in settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. The United Nations and most of the international community consider the settlements illegal under international law.
However, the Israeli government cites Biblical and historical ties to the West Bank, which it considers disputed territory, and opposes the establishment of a Palestinian state. Settlements are an explosive issue that has been seen as a major obstacle to Middle East peace for decades.
The vote was the first of four needed to pass the legislation and coincided with Vance’s visit to Israel, days after President Trump said he would not allow Israel to annex the West Bank.
Netanyahu’s Likud party did not support the legislation, which was put forward by lawmakers outside his ruling coalition and passed with a vote of 25 in favor and 24 against out of 120 lawmakers. A second bill from an opposition party proposing annexation of the Maale Adumim settlement near Jerusalem was passed by 31 votes to 9.
Netanyahu’s government was considering annexation in September as a response to a series of its Western allies recognizing Palestinian statehood, but canceled the move after Trump objected.
Settlement building has been expanding rapidly since Netanyahu’s government came to power in 2022. It is the most right-wing in Israel’s history, including many ultra-nationalist MPs.
The UAE, the most prominent Arab country to establish ties with Israel under the so-called Abraham Accords under Trump in his first term, warned last month 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 he believed the Gulf state had blocked annexation.
The UAE’s national security adviser, Sheikh Tahnoun bin Zayed Al Nahyan, on Wednesday discussed developments related to the ceasefire in Gaza and efforts to strengthen it with US envoy Steve Wittkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, Emirati state news agency WAM reported.
The meeting in the Gulf country followed Witkoff and Kushner’s visit to Israel.