The Secretary of State of the United States, Marco Rubio, warned this Thursday against the annexation of the West Bank, stating that the measure voted by the Israeli Parliament threatens the Gaza agreement.
This Wednesday, the Knesset approved in a preliminary reading with 25 votes in favor and 24 against a proposal to annex the occupied Palestinian territory of the West Bank. This first step precedes three other votes that will be necessary in parliament to turn this bill into law, which reads: “the State of Israel will apply its laws and sovereignty to the settlement areas in Judea and Samaria, to establish the status of these areas as an inseparable part of the sovereign State of Israel.”
“It is a vote in the Knesset, but obviously I think the president has made it clear that it is not something that we support at this time, and we believe that it could jeopardize the peace agreement,” Rubio told reporters before leaving for Israel, according to the Reuters agency.
“They are a democracy, they are going to hold their votes and people are going to adopt these positions. But at this moment, it is something that we… believe could be counterproductive,” he said, according to AFP. Asked about the increase in violence by radical Israeli settlers against Palestinians in the West Bank, he responded: “We are concerned about anything that threatens to destabilize what we have built.”
Rubio's trip to Israel
Rubio is traveling to Israel, where he will be until next Saturday, to continue the implementation of President Donald Trump's plan for Gaza, as confirmed by the Department in a statement.
Israeli Government spokesperson Shosh Bedrosian said that the head of US diplomacy will meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this Friday.
This visit, Rubio's third to Israel since mid-September, follows those of US Vice President JD Vance, along with the White House special envoy for the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, and Jared Kushner, Donald Trump's son-in-law.
On October 10, a precarious ceasefire between Hamas and Israel came into force after more than two years of genocide that has left 68,200 Palestinians dead – including some 20,000 children – and the Strip devastated.
However, last Sunday, Israel bombed the enclave again after the death of two soldiers, killing 45 Palestinians and endangering the continuity of the ceasefire.
New Israeli attack
This same Thursday, according to EFE, Israeli military tanks bombed the Sheikh Nasser area, south of Khan Yunis, early in the morning, “with powerful explosions that were heard throughout the area,” according to local sources told the news agency, despite the ceasefire. At this time, no casualties have been reported from these attacks.
The Sheikh Nasser area is located next to the newly designated “yellow line”, the point to which Israeli troops have withdrawn within Gazan territory as part of this agreement and to which the Gazan population is prohibited from approaching.
Since the ceasefire came into force on October 10, the Army has constantly opened fire from the positions it maintains on “this yellow line” against Palestinian civilians who are trying to return to their homes to see their condition and who, in most cases, were unaware that they were in a “militarized zone.”
The Army said this week that it had begun marking this “yellow line” with 3.5-meter-high concrete posts painted yellow, and that they were placing them every 200 meters.
In these 13 days of truce, the Ministry of Health of the Gaza Strip has counted at least 88 Gazans dead and 315 wounded by Israeli attacks.