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Vice President J.D. Vance slammed the Israeli parliamentary body this week for its vote to annex the West Bank amid a tenuous ceasefire with Hamas, brokered by President Donald Trump and supported by dozens of surrounding nations.
The vice president told reporters, “If it was a political stunt, it was a very stupid political stunt, and I personally take some insult to it – 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, that will continue to be our policy.”
He added, “If people want to take symbolic votes, they can do that, but we certainly weren’t happy about it.”
According to Axios, the Knesset voted on Wednesday on two bills aimed at annexing the West Bank, and both bills passed, despite Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s demand that members of his party not vote on them.
The prime minister slammed the vote in a Thursday statement, writing, “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. The two bills were sponsored by opposition members of the Knesset.”
He continued, “The Likud party and the religious parties (the principal coalition members) did not vote for these bills, except for one disgruntled Likud member who was recently fired from the chairmanship of a Knesset committee. Without Likud support these bills are unlikely to go anywhere.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio – who arrived in Israel on Thursday – reiterated Vice President J.D. Vance’s message on the administration’s policy regarding the annexation of the West Bank.
“I mean, that’s a vote in the – yeah, that’s a vote in the Knesset, but obviously I think the President’s made clear that’s not something we’d be supportive of right now, and we think it’s potentially threatening to the peace deal,” he told the press.
He acknowledged Israel’s functionality as a democracy, but noted that the Trump administration believed that annexing the West Bank at this time would be “counterproductive.”
