WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump said Israel would lose its crucial backing from the United States if it annexes the occupied West Bank, in a Time magazine interview published on Thursday.
Trump’s comments, which Time said were made by telephone on October 15, were published as both Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned against any annexation.
“It won’t happen. It won’t happen because I gave my word to the Arab countries. And you can’t do that now. We’ve had great Arab support,” Trump said when asked what the consequences would be for Israel if it did so.
“Israel would lose all of its support from the United States if that happened.”
Trump also told Time that he believed Saudi Arabia would join the Abraham Accords, which normalise relations between Israel and Arab states, by the end of the year.
“Yes, I do. I do,” he said when asked if he thought Riyadh would join in that timeframe.
“See they had a problem. They had a Gaza problem and they had an Iran problem. Now they don’t have those two problems,” he said, referring to Israel’s military onslaught in Gaza and Iran’s nuclear programme, which US airstrikes targeted earlier this year.
Trump then said that he would be “making a decision” on whether Israel should release high-profile Palestinian prisoner Marwan Barghouti as part of peace moves.
Barghouti — from Hamas’s rival, the Fatah movement — was among the Palestinian prisoners Hamas wanted to see released as part of the Gaza deal, according to Egyptian state-linked media.
Trump has dispatched a stream of top officials to Israel in recent days to shore up the fragile Gaza ceasefire he brokered earlier this month.
But as Vance wrapped up his three-day visit and Rubio arrived, Israeli lawmakers advanced two bills paving the way for West Bank annexation. A bill applying Israeli law to the West Bank, a move tantamount to annexation of a territory that Palestinians seek for part of a future independent state, won preliminary approval from Israeli lawmakers on Wednesday.
Vance said it was a “very stupid political stunt and I personally take some insult to it”. As Rubio left Washington he warned Israel against annexing the West Bank, saying steps taken by parliament and settler violence threatened the Gaza truce.
Vance said that Trump would oppose Israeli annexation of the occupied West Bank and it would not happen.
Vance spoke after Rubio warned that steps toward annexing the territory, which Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war, could endanger Trump’s plan to end the Gaza conflict, which has yielded a shaky ceasefire so far.
“The West Bank is not going to be annexed by Israel. The policy of President Trump is that the West Bank will not be annexed. This will always be our policy,” Vance said at the end of a two-day visit to Israel.
Far-right opposition sponsored vote
The vote was sponsored by a far-right opposition lawmaker who until recently was in the ruling right-wing coalition, and backed by ultranationalists National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich. The reading passed by a vote of 25-24 out of 120 lawmakers.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office later said that the vote was a “deliberate political provocation” that aimed to sow division during Vance’s visit.
Netanyahu’s Likud party did not vote for the bill, it said, adding that without its support, attempts to legislate the annexation of the West Bank were “unlikely to go anywhere”.
The US has long been Israel’s most powerful and staunch major power ally and the Trump administration is particularly close to Israel with considerable sway over its leadership.
Netanyahu has repeatedly ruled out Palestinian statehood. His cabinet has considered the idea of annexation as a response to major Western allies recently recognising a Palestinian state to put pressure on Israel to stop its devastating military onslaught in Gaza, but appeared to shelve it after Trump objected last month.
Senior White House officials and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner have been visiting Israel seeking to keep alive the 13-day-old truce between Israel and Hamas after two years of fighting that has upended the Middle East.
Rubio is due to arrive in Israel on Thursday.
The US State Department said Rubio was visiting Israel to support the implementation of Trump’s 20-point Gaza plan, which envisages eventual reconstruction and stable governance in the enclave along with possible steps towards Palestinian statehood.
Vance told reporters at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion airport that he “feels pretty good” about the Gaza ceasefire after holding talks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, other senior officials and the military.
Israel and Hamas have reiterated their commitment to the US-mediated ceasefire while trading accusations of repeated violations since it took effect on October 10.
The deal has so far seen the release of captives held in Gaza in exchange for Palestinians held by Israel, a handover of bodies of some deceased people and a partial pullout of Israeli troops.
West Bank settlements
There are hundreds of thousands of people living in Jewish settlements across the West Bank. The United Nations and much of the international community consider the settlements illegal under international law.
Israel’s government cites biblical and historical connections to the West Bank, territory that it regards as disputed, and opposes any steps towards Palestinian statehood.
The settlements are a highly volatile issue that has for decades loomed as a major obstacle to Middle East peace, as they fragment territory Palestinians want for a viable state.
Wednesday’s vote was the first of four needed to pass the law and coincided with Vance’s visit to Israel — a month after Trump said he would not allow Israel to annex the territory.
Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Turkiye and 13 other Muslim-majority nations condemned the vote, as did the key multilateral organisations that represent Arab states and Muslim nations.
Trump hopes his Gaza plan will deliver stability across the Middle East and widen normalisation deals known as the Abraham Accords between Israel and Arab states such as the United Arab Emirates to include regional power Saudi Arabia.
The kingdom has repeatedly said it would not strike a deal with Israel without the formation of a Palestinian state.
Speaking at a conference in Jerusalem, Smotrich had said that, “if Saudi Arabia tells us normalisation in exchange for a Palestinian state, friends, no thank you.
“Keep riding camels on the sand in the Saudi desert; we’ll keep truly developing — with an economy, a society, a state and all the great and wonderful things we know how to do.“
He later expressed regret for what he called his “unfortunate” remarks about Saudi Arabia.
“My statement regarding Saudi Arabia was unfortunate, and I regret any offence it may have caused,” Smotrich said in a video statement he posted on X.
But he said that he also expected Saudis not to offend Israel.
“I’m also not willing to accept hypocrisy. Just as I don’t intend to offend the Saudis, I expect from them not to offend me, or rather, offend us,” he said.
“And anyone who denies the living and very deep connection we have to the regions of our homeland in Judea and Samaria, offends us,” he added, using the Israeli Biblical term for the occupied West Bank.
Smotrich, who lives in a West Bank settlement, is an outspoken supporter of annexing the Palestinian territory.
His earlier comments had prompted sharp responses in Israel.
Opposition leader Yair Lapid had swiftly denounced the comments.
“To our friends in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Middle East, Smotrich does not represent the state of Israel,” Lapid posted on X in Arabic, later calling for him to apologise.
Former defence minister Benny Gantz, another opposition figure, said that Smotrich’s comments “indicate ignorance, and a lack of internalisation of his responsibility as a senior minister in the government and cabinet”.
The United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco normalised relations with Israel in 2020 under the US-brokered Abraham Accords.
But Saudi Arabia’s own normalisation talks with Israel were frozen after Hamas’s October 2023 attack sparked the Gaza war.
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