JERUSALEM: Israeli lawmakers on Wednesday voted in favor of advancing two bills on annexing the occupied West Bank, an ambition openly promoted by far-right ministers in recent months.
The vote came with US Vice President JD Vance visiting Israel to shore up a Gaza ceasefire brokered by President Donald Trump, who has made clear he would not back annexation of the West Bank.
“I will not allow Israel to annex the West Bank,” Trump told reporters at the White House in September. “It’s not going to happen.”
Israeli media reported that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had called on MPs from his Likud party to abstain from voting.
In a statement, Likud called the votes “another provocation by the opposition aimed at damaging our relations with the United States.”
“True sovereignty will be achieved not through a showy law for the record, but through proper work on the ground,” it added.
During a preliminary reading on Wednesday, lawmakers voted in favor of examining two bills, which means they will be brought forward for further readings in parliament.
The first text, passed by 32 MPs to nine, proposed annexing Maale Adumim, a large Israeli settlement home to some 40,000 people just east of Jerusalem.
The second proposal to annex the entire West Bank was supported by 25 MPs while 24 voted against.
The Knesset, as the parliament is known, has 120 members.
Far-right members of Netanyahu’s cabinet have openly called for annexation of the Palestinian territory, occupied by Israel since 1967.
“Mr Prime Minister. The Knesset has spoken. The people have spoken,” Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich posted on X.
“The time has come to impose full sovereignty over all of Judea and Samaria — the inheritance of our ancestors — and to promote peace agreements in exchange for peace with our neighbors with strength,” he said, using the Israeli Biblical term for the West Bank.
All of Israel’s settlements in the West Bank are illegal under international law.
In August, Israel approved a major settlement project between Maale Adumim and Jerusalem in an area of the Palestinian territory that the international community has warned threatens the viability of a future Palestinian state.
At a signing ceremony in September, Netanyahu vowed that there would be no Palestinian state.
“We are going to fulfil our promise that there will be no Palestinian state, this place belongs to us,” he said at the event in Maale Adumim.
Excluding Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem, the West Bank is home to around three million Palestinians, as well as more than 500,000 Israelis living in settlements.
Since the war in Gaza began in October 2023, violence has also surged in the West Bank.
Israeli lawmakers approve advancement of West Bank annexation bills
https://arab.news/pqv82
Israeli lawmakers approve advancement of West Bank annexation bills
- The first text, passed by 32 MPs to nine, proposed annexing Maale Adumim, a large Israeli settlement home to some 40,000 people just east of Jerusalem
- The second proposal to annex the entire West Bank was supported by 25 MPs while 24 voted against
Sudanese nomads trapped as war fuels banditry and ethnic splits
- War disrupts nomads’ traditional routes and livelihoods
- Nomads face threats from bandits as well as ethnic tensions
NEAR AL-OBEID: Gubara Al-Basheer and his family used to traverse Sudan’s desert with their camels and livestock, moving freely between markets, water sources, and green pastures. But since war erupted in 2023, he and other Arab nomads have been stuck in the desert outside the central Sudanese city of Al-Obeid, threatened by marauding bandits and ethnic tensions.
The war between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has left nearly 14 million people displaced, triggered rounds of ethnic bloodshed, and spread famine and disease.
It has also upset the delicate balance of land ownership and livestock routes that had maintained the nomads’ livelihoods and wider relations in the area, local researcher Ibrahim Jumaa said. Al-Obeid is one of Sudan’s largest cities and capital of North Kordofan state, which has seen the war’s heaviest fighting in recent months.
Those who spoke to Reuters from North Kordofan said they found themselves trapped as ethnic hatred, linked to the war and fueled largely online, spreads.
“We used to be able to move as we wanted. Now there is no choice and no side accepts you,” al-Basheer said. “In the past there were a lot of markets where we could buy and sell. No one hated anyone or rejected anyone. Now it’s dangerous,” he said.
RISK OF ROBBERY
As well as the encroaching war, the nomads — who Jumaa said number in the millions across Sudan — face a threat from bandits who steal livestock.
“There are so many problems now. We can’t go anywhere and if we try we get robbed,” said Hamid Mohamed, another shepherd confined to the outskirts of Al-Obeid.
The RSF emerged from Arab militias known as the Janjaweed, which were accused of genocide in Darfur in the early 2000s.
The US and rights groups have accused the RSF of committing genocide against non-Arabs in West Darfur during the current conflict, in an extension of long-running violence stemming from disputes over land.
The RSF has denied responsibility for ethnically charged killings and has said those responsible for abuses will be held to account. Throughout the war the force has formed linkages with other Arab tribes, at times giving them free rein to loot and kidnap.
But some Arab tribes, and many tribesmen, have not joined the fight.
“We require a national program to counter hate speech, to impose the rule of law, and to promote social reconciliation, as the war has torn the social fabric,” said Jumaa.
