And he’s pouting about it in public
Axios reports that JD has a sad:
Vice President JD Vance said on Thursday before leaving Israel that he was “insulted” by the Knesset vote on annexing the occupied West Bank, which took place while he was visiting the country this week.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has control over the majority in the Knesset and could have stopped the vote by taking it off the agenda or ordering the members of his party to vote against it. He chose not to in order to avoid a confrontation with his ultranationalist coalition partners.
[…]
Speaking with reporters at the airport before departing Israel, Vance was asked about the vote, and he called it “weird.” He said he was confused by it and that he was told it was only “symbolic” and part of a “political stunt with no practical significance.”
“If it was a political stunt, it was a stupid one, and I take some insult to it,” Vance said.He stressed that the Trump administration’s policy is that “the West Bank is not going to be annexed by Israel.”
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Wednesday ahead of his trip to Israel that the Trump administration thinks annexation of the West Bank will be “potentially threatening to the peace deal” in Gaza. “So, they’re a democracy, they’re going to have their votes, people are going to take these positions, but at this time, it’s something that especially we think it might be counterproductive. … We’re concerned about anything that threatens to destabilize what we’ve worked on,” he said.
Imagine that. The right wingers of the Knesset don’t do whatever Trump tells them to do? What kind of empire is this?
The Netanyahu government considered annexing large portions of the West Bank in response to the recognition of a Palestinian state by several Western countries in September.
I know this will shock you, but Trump’s buddies in the Arab states aren’t on board with Israeli annexation of the West Bank or Gaza. It’s kind of a problem, wouldn’t you say?
- The United Arab Emirates told the Trump administration that Israeli annexations would harm the Abraham Accords.
- Trump held a meeting last month with leaders and senior officials from Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, Indonesia and Pakistan and asked them to support his plan for ending the war in Gaza.
- The Arab leaders presented Trump with several conditions for supporting his plan, including a commitment that Israel won’t annex parts of the West Bank or Gaza.
- Trump made it clear to the leaders that he’d block such a step. Three days later, he told reporters that he won’t allow Netanyahu to annex parts of the occupied West Bank.
He won’t? Well, ok then. I guess that means he’ll stop arms shipments and use his tariff threats and all that if Netanyahu and his extremists don’t go along. Sure, sure he will.
I will never get over the fact that the U.S. media gave Trump that ecstatic extravaganza in the middle east when it was obvious that whatever cease fire they had was very fragile and the “peace agreement” was little more than a rough outline that hadn’t actually been signed off on by all the parties that are necessary to make it work. But that’s how Trump gets over. He makes some grandiose announcement and everyone runs toward the big, beautiful sound in order to flatter him and make him happy for that day. It’s almost always total bullshit.