Israel’s West Bank annexation moves threatening Gaza peace deal, says Marco Rubio – Middle East live

US secretary of state calls Knesset votes on imposing sovereignty ‘counterproductive’ as he begins two-day visit to IsraelThe 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.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.We’re concerned about anything that threatens to destabilise what we’ve worked on.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.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. Continue reading...