US President Donald Trump said he will not allow Benjamin Netanyahu to annex the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Speaking ahead of the Israeli prime minister’s address to the UN General Assembly on Friday, the US president told reporters in the Oval Office: “I will not allow Israel to annex the West Bank … It’s not going to happen.”
Trump, who will meet Netanyahu on Monday, also said a Gaza deal was “pretty close”.
Israel is facing increasing global pressure to end the war in Gaza and occupation of the West Bank as a wave of Western states formally recognise an independent Palestinian state. Far-right Israelis see annexation as a way to stop this prospect.
Ultranationalists in Netanyahu’s governing coalition have repeated calls for Israel to annex the West Bank, part of the Palestinian territories, outright.
The UK and Germany say they have warned Israel against annexation, while UN Secretary General António Guterres said at the UN on Monday it would be “morally, legally and politically intolerable”.
On Thursday, Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that he had spoken to Netanyahu as well as other Middle Eastern leaders.
“We’re getting pretty close to having a deal on Gaza, and maybe even peace,” Trump said.
Addressing the UN General Assembly via video link on Thursday, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said he was ready to work with world leaders to implement a peace planfor Israel and the Palestinians announced by France on Monday.
Abbas, 89, was barred by the US from travelling to New York to appear in person.
He thanked those countries which had recently recognised a Palestinian state in a wave of declarations that started with Canada, Australia, the UK and Portugal on Sunday, followed by France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Malta, Monaco, San Marino, Andorra, and Denmark.
The US is currently opposed to recognising Palestine, saying such a move is a reward for Hamas.
“Hamas will not have a role to play in governance,” Abbas said in his speech. He also called for a Palestinian state to assume “full responsibilities” for the Gaza Strip following an Israeli withdrawal and connect it with the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Trump met on Tuesday at the United Nations with the leaders of key Arab and Muslim nations who warned him of consequences if Israel moved ahead with annexation.
“I think the president of the US understands very well the risks and dangers of annexation in the West Bank,” Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan told reporters.
On Wednesday morning Israel closed the only crossing between the Israeli-occupied West Bank and neighbouring Jordan, stopping more than two million Palestinians from accessing the outside world.
The closure came days after two Israeli military personnel were shot dead near the crossing by a Jordanian gunman, who was killed at the scene.
In Gaza, more than 80 Palestinians, including women and children, were killed by Israeli fire on Wednesday, most of them in Gaza City, local hospitals said.
The Israeli military launched a campaign in Gaza in response to the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.
At least 65,419 people have been killed in Israeli attacks in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s Hama-run health ministry, including more than 18,000 children.
In August, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), a UN-backed body, said more than half a million people across Gaza were facing “catastrophic” conditions characterised by “starvation, destitution and death”. Netanyahu has repeatedly denied starvation is taking place in Gaza.
A United Nations commission of inquiry found Israel has committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, in a report Israel’s foreign ministry categorically rejected as “distorted and false”.
Israel is under increasing pressure to end the war and occupation.
In addition to more countries recognising a Palestinian state, the European Commission has unveiled plans to restrict trade with Israel and impose sanctions on extremist ministers in its government, which – if adopted – would be the EU’s toughest response to the war in Gaza.
This week Microsoft cut off some services to a unit of Israel’s Ministry of Defence after an investigation found its technology had been used to conduct mass surveillance on people in Gaza.
But Netanyahu has called for Israel to embrace increased self-sufficiency.
By BBC News
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