U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio (C) speaks to reporters during a meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte in the Oval Office of the White House on Oct. 22, 2025. (Credit: Alex Wong/AFP)
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that the Israeli Knesset's move towards the annexation of the occupied West Bank would threaten President Donald Trump's plan to end the war in Gaza.
"I mean, that’s a vote in the Knesset, but obviously I think the president’s made clear that’s not something we’d be supportive of right now, and we think it’s potentially threatening to the peace deal," Rubio told reporters late on Wednesday before leaving for Israel.
Rubio's visit to Israel, announced by the State Department on Wednesday, is the latest by a senior U.S. official seeking to keep alive a fragile truce between Israel and Hamas.
U.S. Vice President JD Vance arrived in Israel this week and met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday. He is due to meet Defense Minister Israel Katz and Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer on Thursday before departing.
The State Department said Rubio was visiting Israel to support the implementation of Trump's 20-point plan to end the Gaza war.
A bill applying Israeli law to the occupied West Bank, a move tantamount to annexation of Palestinian land, won preliminary approval from Israel's parliament on Wednesday.
Around 700,000 Israeli settlers are living in illegal settlements across the Israeli-occupied West Bank. The United Nations and most of the international community deem the settlements illegal under international law.
The vote was the first of four needed to pass the law and coincided with Vance's visit to Israel, a month after Trump said that he would not allow Israel to annex the West Bank.
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 favor and 24 against out of 120 lawmakers.
A second bill by an opposition party proposing the annexation of the Maale Adumim settlement — the settlement occupying the Palestinian town of Anata — won by 31-9. The settlement is located 7 kilometers away from Jerusalem and is the largest in its jurisdictional area.
Netanyahu's government had been mulling annexation as a response to a string of its Western allies recognizing a Palestinian state in September, but appeared to scrap the move after Trump objected.
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