Right-wing ministers call to annex West Bank after UN votes for two-state solution

Top Israeli ministers on Saturday amplified calls for the government to annex the West Bank, a day after the United Nations General Assembly overwhelmingly endorsed a declaration calling for a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians.

The non-binding resolution, which outlined “tangible, time-bound and irreversible steps” toward a two-state solution, without the involvement of Hamas, was endorsed by 142 countries, with 10 votes against and 12 abstentions.

On Saturday evening, far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich posted on X, calling the UN declaration “a diplomatic attack on Israel,” and said that the fact that it has been met largely with silence from Israel is “unacceptable and cannot continue.”

Smotrich said that, as a response to the UN vote, “Israel must apply sovereignty [to the West Bank] as a preventive measure against the reckless attempt to establish a terror state in the heart of our land.”

Also chiming in was Justice Minister Yariv Levin, who declared that “the UN decision to recognize a ‘Palestinian state’ that will never be established is a reward for terrorism.”

“The land of Israel belongs to the people of Israel,” he said. “Even the UN decision will not change that.”

“It is time to apply sovereignty to Judea, Samaria and the Jordan Valley,” he said, using the biblical names for the Palestinian territory. “This is the appropriate Zionist response!”

A number of right-wing ministers have called in recent weeks for the annexation of parts or all of the West Bank as a response to several Western governments, including the UK and France, announcing that they intend to recognize the State of Palestine at the United Nations later this month.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has reportedly been seriously considering the idea, and even scheduled a cabinet meeting to discuss it, though the meeting was later axed after the United Arab Emirates issued a public warning that such a move would put its ties with Israel at risk.

On Thursday evening, the premier declared that Israel would “fulfill our promise that there will be no Palestinian state,” as he signed an agreement to push ahead with the controversial E1 settlement expansion plan that will cut across West Bank land Palestinians seek for a state.

The settlement expansion plan will see 3,412 housing units built in a new neighborhood of Maale Adumim on the western side of the city, just east of East Jerusalem. Advocates of a two-state solution have argued for decades that the E1 project will ,in effect, divide the West Bank in two for its Palestinian population, sever Palestinian East Jerusalem from the West Bank, and severely harm the future viability of a Palestinian state.

A report by Army Radio last week said, without sourcing, that Israel believes it has “silent approval” from the Trump Administration for annexation limited to the Jordan Valley area.

In 2020, Netanyahu believed he had US President Donald Trump’s backing to annex the Jordan Valley and West Bank settlement areas, but was told by Trump’s adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner that this was not the case.

According to a recent poll, the majority of the US public, including the Republican “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) movement, opposes Israeli annexation of the West Bank.

On Saturday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who is in Israel for an official visit, told reporters that the push in Israel to recognize new settlements was a response to “efforts around the world to recognize a Palestinian state,” and that the US had “warned a lot of these countries that that’s what would happen, or what we thought might hapen, if they went ahead with this.”

He declined to comment further on the matter, but said he was certain the matter would “come up in the conversation” with Israeli officials during his visit.

Offering more insight into how the Trump administration may feel about the matter of West Bank annexation, two Israeli officials told Axios on Saturday that “Rubio has signaled in private meetings that he doesn’t oppose West Bank annexations and the Trump administration won’t stand in the way.”

At the same time, the report cited a US official as saying White House and State Department officials who have held internal meetings on the issue fear Israeli annexation of parts of the West Bank would lead to the collapse of the Abraham Accords and tarnish Trump’s legacy.

The report said Netanyahu wants “to figure out from Rubio” how much leeway he has on annexation.

Israel’s presence in the West Bank, which it has controlled since the Six-Day War of June 1967, is considered illegitimate by most countries, with the notable exception of the United States during Trump’s two terms.