Annexing the West Bank would annoy the USA!
JVL Introduction
Trump, Rubio and Vance are furious that the Israeli Knesset has passed a motion to move forward on annexing the West Bank. Trump is clear that there would be no annexation “because I gave my word to the Arab countries.” He also said that “Israel would lose all of its support from the United States if that happened,” (See also BBC Report here.)
We may well question the motivation – not least because effective West Bank annexation has been happening for decades, sometimes by stealth and sometimes, such as over the last two years, at speed – but something is shifting and this seems to be a step too far even for the Israel-supporting USA. After all, Trump wants to do deals with Arab States, who cannot completely ignore the needs and rights of Palestinians and he wants a Nobel Peace prize (!) and Netanyahu is mucking things up. It may also be that Vance has seen that it is Israel putting the US brokered “ceasefire” at risk; for example, making clearly impossible demands to have returned all the bodies of those Israeli hostages who have been killed when Israel has bombed the places, including cemeteries, where they had been kept, within 72 hours. That is demanding the immediate return while also refusing to allow the necessary equipment to help find the bodies into Gaza.
We must hope, even as bombs continue to fall, that the ceasefire broadly holds and that those near silent governments have to admit that Israel has to be reined in. But we can never rely on governments and must keep up the pressure on those governments.
LL
This article was originally published by The Guardian on Thu 23 Oct 2025. Read the original here.
Vance says Knesset votes on annexing West Bank are an ‘insult’ as Netanyahu halts progress
US vice-president suggests votes were ‘stupid political stunt’ as Israeli PM orders a stop to any further work on bills
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… all this suggests the inner Trump circle think Qatar, other Gulf states and Turkey are a lot more important to THEM than Israel is. Whether that’s what they’ll think tomorrow is anyone’s guess ….
I’d imagine serious-minded Israelis in the IDF, civil service and business world fear these are the early signs of a world in which “Big Brother” no longer shields them from the consequences of their actions over the last 2 years and the years since 1948.
Unhappily for the Palestinians, the potentially grave problems Israel faces seem unlikely to provide immediate relief for them. And immediate relief is what they need.
so Trump is against Israel annexing the West Bank because he promised the Arabs that he would not allow that to happen… but Trump is A OK with annexing Canada, Greenland (& Venezuela?). What a charlatan. He doesn’t want the ceasefire that (he claims) he brought about because he is gagging to get his blood-stained hands on the Nobel Peace Prize. And land colossally huge deals in the M.E.. What a snake oil salesman. Miriam Adelson must be having a fit of the vapours… so there is a silver lining to this sordid tragi-farce. PS I just posted this on the Times of Israel Comments
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/6/11/nuseirat-anatomy-of-israels-massacre-in-gaza
it didn’t go down well. The ToI Editor David Horovic is demanding that Trump walk back his chummy relationship with QATAR unless they shut down Al Jazeera. An editor peddling an assault on freedom of expression.
Netanyahu Promised Before October 7th that he would annex the West Bank in Two Years. He has been in the process of splitting it into smaller areas ever since with the ever increasing help of Terrorists who are Euphemistically called settlers. They move prefabricated buildings into Palestinian land overnight The steal their animals destroy their crops and and burn or uproot their olive trees and orange groves. We know this is illegal under international Law. but just like the Nazi government the Netanyahu Government changes regulations and the L;aw to accommodate this behaviour. Internationally, no one takes any notice or does anything to stop it. The IDF and Israeli Police are in control of the whole area illegally They are uniformed Terrorists. No one does anything about that. The Police and IDF protect the Terrorists of Palestinian Farmers if they are called by the Palestinians or the Terrorists stealing their land and killing them, or making life unbearable by destroying their water tanks and crops. The World Powers have stood by while Palestine has been raped and devoured by a voracious insatiable force of hate and avarice. How the Palestinian People have suffered for what the World Powers did after WW2.
What does “annexation” mean? Israel already has full control over the entire West Bank.
In the West Bank, Israel controls water, electricity, movement of Palestinians, building of new structures, employment rights, roads, farmland, etc – all controled the detriment of Palestinans.
It doesn’t annoy scores of millions of US Christian and Jewish Zionists and Evangelicals.