Rubio says Israel annexation moves in West Bank ’threatening’ Gaza deal
The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, warned Israel on Wednesday against annexing the West Bank, saying steps taken by parliament and settler violence threatened a Gaza deal.
Israeli lawmakers voted on Wednesday to advance two bills on annexing the occupied West Bank, barely a week after President Donald Trump pushed through a deal aimed at ending a two-year Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip that was retaliation for a Hamas attack.
“I think the president’s made clear that’s not something we can be supportive of right now,” Rubio said of annexation as he boarded his plane for a visit to Israel. Annexation moves are “threatening for the peace deal,” he told reporters.
According to Agence France-Presse (AFP), Rubio added:
They’re a democracy, they’re going to have their votes, and people are going to take these positions. But at this time, it’s something that we … think might be counterproductive.
Asked about increased violence by extremist Israeli settlers against Palestinians in the West Bank, Rubio said:
We’re concerned about anything that threatens to destabilise what we’ve worked on.
But Rubio – the latest high-ranking US visitor to Israel after vice-president JD Vance – voiced optimism overall for preserving Trump’s Gaza deal. Rubio said:
Every day there’ll be threats to it, but I actually think we’re ahead of schedule in terms of bringing it together, and the fact that we made it through this weekend is a good sign.
The US is the primary military and diplomatic supporter of Israel and Rubio until recently had steered clear of criticising annexation moves championed by far-right allies of the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
But a number of Arab and Islamic states, which the US is courting to provide troops and money for a stabilisation force in Gaza, have warned that annexation of the West Bank, led by Hamas’s moderate rivals in the Palestinian Authority, was a red line.
In other developments:
Israel must allow aid into Gaza, and its restrictions on doing so over the past two years have put it in breach of its obligations, the UN’s top court has found. The stinging advisory opinion by the international court of justice in The Hague also found that Israel had a duty not to impede the supply of aid by UN organisations including the beleaguered UN Palestinian relief agency Unrwa, which has been in effect banned from the territory since January.
On the second day of a US diplomatic push aimed at shoring up the fragile Gaza ceasefire, Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, dismissed as “hogwash” suggestions that his country was a client state of Washington. Despite the US providing an estimated 68% of Israel’s foreign-sourced weapons, Netanyahu, when asked on Wednesday if Israel was beholden to Washington, said: “I want to put it very clearly. One week they say that Israel controls the United States. A week later they say the United States controls Israel. This is hogwash.”
Israel’s supreme court is scheduled to hear on Thursday a petition filed by an organisation representing international media outlets in Israel and the Palestinian territories, demanding independent access for journalists to Gaza. Since the Gaza war began in October 2023, Israeli authorities have prevented foreign journalists from entering the territory, taking only a handful of reporters inside on tightly controlled visits alongside its troops.
More than two dozen Democratic lawmakers have written to the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, and the US ambassador to Israel urging them to help secure the release of Mohammed Ibrahim, a 16-year-old Palestinian-American citizen who has been held in Israeli military detention for nearly eight months. Ibrahim, a dual Palestinian-American teenager from Florida, was arrested in a raid on his family’s West Bank home in February when he was 15 years old.
Key events
Israeli drone fire killed a Palestinian in southern Gaza, say health authorities
Overnight, residents reported almost constant heavy gunfire and tank shelling in eastern areas of Khan Younis in southern Gaza and also east of Gaza City in the north of the Palestinian territory, reports Reuters.
Gaza health authorities said Israeli drone fire killed one Palestinian in southern Gaza.
“Gunfire and explosions almost didn’t stop until the morning, my three children woke up and asked me if the war had come back,” Mohammad Abu Mansour, 40, a farmer living in the central Gaza Strip told Reuters. Communicating via a chat app, he asked:
When is this all going to end and we regain our normal lives without fears?
The Israeli military did not immediately comment on the spate of shooting and shelling or the drone fire, reports Reuters. But witnesses told the news agency that relative calm returned to the coastal territory after daybreak.
Turkish peacekeeping forces will continue to help boost the Lebanese army’s capability under a renewed deployment mandate in Lebanon, Turkey’s defence ministry said on Thursday, reports Reuters.
Turkey’s parliament passed a bill on Tuesday to renew the military’s deployment mandates in Syria and Iraq by three more years, and its deployment mandate under the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (Unifil) by two years. The ministry said in a statement:
Efforts will continue to improve security conditions in the region, ensure stability and assist in the capacity building of the Lebanese armed forces, with the aim of establishing and maintaining peace in Lebanon.
Nato member Turkey, which took part in mediation that led to the ceasefire deal in Gaza, condemned Israeli offensives in the Palestinian territory and regional countries including Lebanon, saying that “genocidal” and “expansionist” Israeli policies remained the biggest threat to regional peace, reports Reuters.
Separately, the defence ministry said in its weekly briefing that the renewed Iraq and Syria mandates aimed to preserve Turkey’s national security against attempts to harm the territorial integrity of its two neighbours.
Turkey has been frustrated by what it calls the stalling of the US-backed, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in terms of implementing a landmark integration agreement that it signed with Syria’s government in March.
Ankara views the SDF as a terrorist organisation linked to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK) militant group, which has been in a disarmament process that Turkey says must apply to the SDF as well. It has warned of military action against the SDF and said Damascus should address its concerns.
In the mandate passed on Tuesday, parliament said the move was necessary because “terrorist organisations continued their presence in the region” and the SDF was “rejecting taking steps toward integrating into Syria’s central administration over its separatist and discriminatory agenda”.
WHO says it led first medical evacuation since Gaza ceasefire with 41 critical patients
In the first medical evacuation since the ceasefire began on 10 October, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Thursday they had evacuated 41 critical patients and 145 companions out of the Gaza Strip.
In a statement posted to X, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called on nations to show solidarity and help 15,000 patients who are still waiting for approval to receive medical care outside Gaza.
US vice-president JD Vance has visited the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the sprawling 12th-century basilica where Christians believe Jesus was crucified, died and rose again, in Jerusalem’s Old City.
He is then expected to meet Israel’s defence minister, Israeli military leaders and other officials at the army’s headquarters in Tel Aviv, reports the Associated Press (AP).
On Wednesday, Vance sought to ease concerns that the Trump administration was dictating terms to its closest ally in the Middle East.
“We don’t want in Israel a vassal state, and that’s not what Israel is. We want a partnership, we want an ally,” Vance said beside prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in response to a reporter’s question about whether Israel was becoming a “protectorate” of the US.
Netanyahu, who will meet The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, on Friday, expressed similar sentiments while acknowledging differences of opinion as they push forward the US-proposed Gaza ceasefire agreement
Humanitarian organisations are also facing growing restrictions, said the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC). In March 2025, Israel introduced new registration rules for international agencies that could prevent them from operating anywhere in the occupied territory.
The secretary general of the NRC, Jan Egeland said:
Israel’s new registration rules for international organisations strike at the heart of international humanitarian relief.
If enforced, they will paralyse our life-saving work. Donors cannot remain silent while access to aid becomes a political tool. There is a systematic effort to suppress accountability, which must be met with coordinated international action.
He added:
Recognition of Palestine by 157 countries shows overwhelming global consensus that the occupation must end. The time for statements has passed – states that recognise Palestine must now act on their commitments by holding Israel accountable for annexation, demolitions and the obstruction of aid.
Recognition means nothing if there is no land remaining for a viable Palestinian state.
‘Same violence and impunity’ seen in Gaza ‘dispossessing whole communities in the West Bank’, says aid official
The ceasefire in Gaza should mark a turning point for all Palestinians, not be a pretext to tighten control over the West Bank, the secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) Jan Egeland has warned.
During his visit to the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, this week, Egeland said that “the same violence and impunity we saw in Gaza is dispossessing whole communities in the West Bank”. He stressed that “recovery in one part of the territory cannot come at the cost of destruction in another”.
Egeland said:
As there is hope at long last in Gaza, the West Bank is being intentionally and brutally carved up.
Military operations in Jenin, Nur Shams, and Tulkarm refugee camps have displaced more than 30,000 people, yet humanitarian groups remain barred from assessing the full scale of destruction, said the NRC. Commenting on this, Egeland said:
Humanitarians cannot even reach parts of Jenin and Tulkarm camps to verify the devastation, and communities are not allowed to return.
Restrictions and intimidation are silencing the truth about what is happening.
Nearly 1,400 Palestinian structures, including homes, schools, agricultural buildings and water infrastructure, have been destroyed this year, said the NRC, adding that this has displaced at least 1,400 people and negatively affected tens of thousands more.
Egeland said:
I witnessed how Israeli settler violence, backed by the authorities – including Israeli cabinet ministers – is driving vulnerable Palestinian communities from their homes.
It was heartbreaking to meet with families driven from their homes by unrelenting settler violence – their lives disrupted and livelihoods lost. Entire communities are being erased.
Many families I listened to are having their land – land they have lived on for generations – stolen from them. Some communities have lost their water connection as settlers have diverted the supply: how can such actions go on with total impunity?
In the first nine months of this year, the UN documented an average of more than four violent settler attacks per day, which have led to the forced displacement of 1,276 Palestinians.
On Thursday, Israel’s supreme court held a hearing into whether to open the Gaza Strip to the international media and gave the state 30 days to present a new position in light of the new situation under the ceasefire, reports the Associated Press (AP).
Israel has blocked reporters from entering Gaza since the war erupted on 7 October 2023.
The Foreign Press Association (FPA), which represents dozens of international news organisations including the AP, had asked the court to order the government to open the border.
The court rejected a request from the FPA early in the war, due to objections by the government on security grounds. The group filed a second request for access in September 2024. The government has repeatedly delayed the case.
Palestinian journalists have covered the two-year war for international media. But like all Palestinians, they have been subject to tough restrictions on movement and shortages of food, repeatedly displaced and operated under great danger, reports the AP. Two hundred Palestinian journalists have been killed by Israeli fire, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).
Tania Kraemer, chair of the FPA, said:
It is time for Israel to lift the closure and let us do our work alongside our Palestinian colleagues.
Earlier this week, the US vice-president, JD Vance, announced the opening of a civilian military coordination cente in southern Israel where 200 US troops are working alongside the Israeli military and delegations from other countries planning the stabilisation and reconstruction of Gaza.
According to the Associated Press (AP), Rubio told journalists at Joint Base Andrews late on Wednesday that he plans to visit the centre and appoint a foreign service official to work alongside the top US military commander in the Middle East, Vice Adm Brad Cooper.
The US is seeking support from other allies, especially Gulf nations, to create an international stabilisation force to be deployed to Gaza and train a Palestinian force.
The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said:
We’d like to see Palestinian police forces in Gaza that are not Hamas and that are going to do a good job, but those still have to be trained and equipped.
Settlement building has been expanding in the occupied West Bank rapidly since 2022 when the government led by the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, came to power. It is the most rightwing in Israel’s history, featuring several ultra-nationalist lawmakers.
The United Arab Emirates (UAE), the most prominent Arab country to establish ties with Israel under the Abraham accords brokered by the US president, Donald Trump, in his first term in office, last month warned that annexation in the West Bank was a red line for the Gulf state.
The senior Emirati official Anwar Gargash, a diplomatic adviser to the UAE president, told the Reuters NEXT Gulf Summit in Abu Dhabi on Wednesday that he believed the Gulf state had averted annexation.
The UAE national security adviser, Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, discussed on Wednesday developments related to the ceasefire in Gaza and efforts to consolidate it with US envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, the Emirati state news agency WAM reported.
The meeting in the Gulf country came after a visit by Witkoff and Kushner to Israel.
Explainer: What were the bills on annexing the occupied West Bank voted on by Israeli lawmakers?
Reuters has some more detail on the bills voted on yesterday by Israeli lawmakers mentioned in the previous post:
A bill applying Israeli law to the occupied West Bank, a move tantamount to annexation of land that Palestinians want for a state, won preliminary approval from Israel’s parliament on Wednesday.
There are about 700,000 Israeli settlers living in settlements across the Israeli-occupied West Bank. The United Nations and much of the international community consider the settlements illegal under international law.
Israel’s government, however, cites biblical and historical connections to the West Bank, territory that it regards as disputed, and opposes the establishment of a Palestinian state. The settlements are an explosive issue that has for decades been seen as a major obstacle to Middle East peace.
The vote was the first of four needed to pass the law and coincided with US vice-president JD Vance’s visit to Israel, a month after President Donald Trump said that he would not allow Israel to annex the West Bank.
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party did not support the legislation, which was put forward by lawmakers outside his ruling coalition and passed by a vote of 25 in favour and 24 against out of 120 lawmakers.
A second bill by an opposition party proposing the annexation of the Maale Adumim settlement near Jerusalem passed by 31 votes to 9.
Netanyahu’s government had been mulling annexation as a response to a string of its western allies recognising a Palestinian state in September, but appeared to scrap the move after Trump objected.
Rubio says Israel annexation moves in West Bank ’threatening’ Gaza deal
The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, warned Israel on Wednesday against annexing the West Bank, saying steps taken by parliament and settler violence threatened a Gaza deal.
Israeli lawmakers voted on Wednesday to advance two bills on annexing the occupied West Bank, barely a week after President Donald Trump pushed through a deal aimed at ending a two-year Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip that was retaliation for a Hamas attack.
“I think the president’s made clear that’s not something we can be supportive of right now,” Rubio said of annexation as he boarded his plane for a visit to Israel. Annexation moves are “threatening for the peace deal,” he told reporters.
According to Agence France-Presse (AFP), Rubio added:
They’re a democracy, they’re going to have their votes, and people are going to take these positions. But at this time, it’s something that we … think might be counterproductive.
Asked about increased violence by extremist Israeli settlers against Palestinians in the West Bank, Rubio said:
We’re concerned about anything that threatens to destabilise what we’ve worked on.
But Rubio – the latest high-ranking US visitor to Israel after vice-president JD Vance – voiced optimism overall for preserving Trump’s Gaza deal. Rubio said:
Every day there’ll be threats to it, but I actually think we’re ahead of schedule in terms of bringing it together, and the fact that we made it through this weekend is a good sign.
The US is the primary military and diplomatic supporter of Israel and Rubio until recently had steered clear of criticising annexation moves championed by far-right allies of the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
But a number of Arab and Islamic states, which the US is courting to provide troops and money for a stabilisation force in Gaza, have warned that annexation of the West Bank, led by Hamas’s moderate rivals in the Palestinian Authority, was a red line.
In other developments:
Israel must allow aid into Gaza, and its restrictions on doing so over the past two years have put it in breach of its obligations, the UN’s top court has found. The stinging advisory opinion by the international court of justice in The Hague also found that Israel had a duty not to impede the supply of aid by UN organisations including the beleaguered UN Palestinian relief agency Unrwa, which has been in effect banned from the territory since January.
On the second day of a US diplomatic push aimed at shoring up the fragile Gaza ceasefire, Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, dismissed as “hogwash” suggestions that his country was a client state of Washington. Despite the US providing an estimated 68% of Israel’s foreign-sourced weapons, Netanyahu, when asked on Wednesday if Israel was beholden to Washington, said: “I want to put it very clearly. One week they say that Israel controls the United States. A week later they say the United States controls Israel. This is hogwash.”
Israel’s supreme court is scheduled to hear on Thursday a petition filed by an organisation representing international media outlets in Israel and the Palestinian territories, demanding independent access for journalists to Gaza. Since the Gaza war began in October 2023, Israeli authorities have prevented foreign journalists from entering the territory, taking only a handful of reporters inside on tightly controlled visits alongside its troops.
More than two dozen Democratic lawmakers have written to the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, and the US ambassador to Israel urging them to help secure the release of Mohammed Ibrahim, a 16-year-old Palestinian-American citizen who has been held in Israeli military detention for nearly eight months. Ibrahim, a dual Palestinian-American teenager from Florida, was arrested in a raid on his family’s West Bank home in February when he was 15 years old.
