US President Donald Trump on Thursday declared “Israel is not going to do anything with the West Bank,” as officials from his administration leveled harsh criticism against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government after lawmakers advanced legislation to annex parts of the West Bank while Vice President JD Vance was visiting the country.
“Don’t worry about the West Bank,” Trump told reporters at the White House, in his first comments on the matter since the Knesset voted on the two bills Wednesday. “Don’t worry about it,” he repeated. “Israel’s doing very well. They’re not going to do anything with it.”
The measures were passed despite opposition from Netanyahu, in light of Trump’s vow last month that he would not allow Israel to make the controversial move.
“The Israelis can’t treat us like we’re Joe Biden,” a Trump administration official told The Times of Israel late Thursday, speaking on condition of anonymity. Netanyahu regularly sparred with Biden during the Democratic president’s administration and was accused at times of seeking rifts with him for domestic political gain.
The decision by the senior US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, to draw a comparison to Biden also harkened back to another US-Israeli rift in 2010, under the Obama administration, when the Interior Ministry announced that 1,600 housing units would be built in a Jewish neighborhood of East Jerusalem while then-vice president Biden was in town.
Another US official warned Thursday that Trump will “f**k” Netanyahu if the Israeli leader jeopardizes the Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal, according to a Channel 12 report.
“Netanyahu is walking a fine line with President Trump. If he keeps going, he’ll f**k up the Gaza deal. And if he f**ks up the deal, Donald Trump will f**k him,” the official reportedly told the outlet’s correspondent Barak Ravid.
“In English, it sounds even cruder,” news anchor Yonit Levi noted at the end of Ravid’s report.
The source told Ravid that Vance, in Israel at the time, was shocked by the decision and said that Israel was acting in an “unsupervised” manner.
Netanyahu updated Vance about the Knesset vote during the vice president’s visit, assuring him that it was merely a “preliminary vote” and would “go nowhere,” the public broadcaster Kan reported.
“This cannot happen while I am visiting here,” Vance was said to have retorted. American officials reportedly warned Netanyahu that the vote could provoke a backlash and destabilize ongoing negotiations over the ceasefire.
Leaving Israel on Thursday afternoon, Vance said at the airport that he was told the initial passage of the bill was a “political stunt” and “purely symbolic,” but that, if so, it was a “very stupid political stunt, and I personally take some insult to it.”
Related: Israel would lose ‘all support’ from the US if it annexes West Bank, Trump warns
‘Days of destiny’
Amid the mounting frustration in Washington, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio landed in Israel Thursday evening and met with Netanyahu in Jerusalem.
The two issued statements at a joint press appearance that lasted less than two minutes, and did not take any questions.
In his brief remarks, Netanyahu said that Israel now faces “days of destiny.”
“We want to advance peace. We still have security challenges, but I think that we can work together… [to] both address the challenges and seize the opportunities,” Netanyahu said, characterizing the carousel of senior Trump officials visiting Israel over the past week as being part of a circle of trust and partnership” between Israel and the US.
“We have more work ahead of us, but we feel very positive about it. We’re making good progress,” Rubio said, referencing the Gaza ceasefire deal inked earlier this month.
“No one’s under any illusions. We’ve already done the impossible once, and we intend to keep doing that,” said the top US diplomat.
Rubio noted that Trump has made building on the Gaza ceasefire a “top priority,” as evidenced by his dispatching of senior aides Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, followed by Vance and the secretary of state.
“It’s a very important achievement, but there’s more work to be done and bigger achievements that lie ahead… We feel very positive and confident that we’re going to get there despite substantial obstacles,” Rubio said, without elaborating on what those obstacles are.
While meeting on Wednesday with Vance, Netanyahu reportedly expressed willingness to assist in implementing the next stages of Trump’s Gaza ceasefire plan.
However, Israeli television reported that the prime minister has also outlined several red lines to the US over the past week, including absolute opposition to any Turkish presence in the Gaza Strip and to the Palestinian Authority or Hamas playing a governing role there “the day after” the war. He is also said to have insisted that a full IDF withdrawal would only take place after Hamas is fully disarmed and the Strip demilitarized.
Arab and Muslim countries reject annexation
Meanwhile, over a dozen Arab and Muslim countries signed onto a joint statement spearheaded by Saudi Arabia blasting the annexation votes as “blatant” violations of international law.
The countries said they “condemn in the strongest terms the approval [by the] Israeli Knesset of two draft laws aiming to impose so-called ‘Israeli sovereignty’ over the occupied West Bank, and on Israeli illegal colonial settlements as a blatant violation of international law.”
Among the statement’s signatories were Jordan, Egypt, Qatar, Kuwait, Indonesia, Pakistan, Turkey, Oman, the Palestinian Authority, Qatar, Kuwait, Libya, Malaysia, Egypt and Nigeria,
The issue of annexation is tricky for Netanyahu, whose hard-right base is broadly supportive of annexation. Many in Netanyahu’s coalition have been loudly calling to advance annexation as a response to the recognition of a Palestinian state by Western powers last month.
Doing so, however, could deal a blow to Trump’s hopes for Saudi-Israeli normalization, a long-time goal of the American president seen as the next step in the Abraham Accords agreements between Israel and neighboring countries.
