One day after the Israeli parliament votes to annex the West Bank, Donald Trump declares he will forbid it.
Two bills aimed at annexing the occupied West Bank have limped through Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, on Tuesday night in defiance of both the United States and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing Likud party.
Responding to news of the vote, US President Donald Trump said simply, Israel is “not going to do anything with the West Bank”.
Meanwhile, his vice president, JD Vance, who was in Israel to safeguard the ceasefire that the US brokered for Gaza earlier this month, went further, describing the vote as “weird” and adding, “I personally take some insult to it.”
The occupied West Bank, along with East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, has been under Israeli military occupation since 1967. Since then, Israeli settlements have continued to be built, despite being illegal under international law, and, in the case of settlement outposts, under Israeli law as well.
There are currently about 700,000 Israeli settlers living in 250 illegal settlements on Palestinian land in the West Bank and East Jerusalem combined.
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