On Wednesday, Israel’s Knesset approved a motion calling for the annexation of the occupied West Bank, the latest step in its ongoing campaign to strengthen Israel’s control over the occupied Palestinian territory.

The vote passed by a wide margin, 71-13, including several votes from opposition factions that had left the coalition government on July 14. The opposition parties Yesh Atid and Blue and White did not participate in the vote, and the Democrats, Ra’am, and Hadash-Ta’al voted against the resolution.

While the proposal is non-binding and does not, in principle, affect the legal status of the West Bank, it seeks to legitimize and normalize as law Israel’s objective over the territory, which it has occupied since 1967. For decades, Israel has been carrying out colonial expansion through the use of settlers who act in concert with the Israeli Army, intimidating, murdering, and expelling the local population.

The bill is also meant to send a message to the world at a time when the Netanyahu government — and the state of Israel — are losing legitimacy because of the genocide it is carrying out in the Gaza Strip, which has generated not only an international movement of rejection but also multiple calls for recognition of a Palestinian state.

This is why the ballot proposal states, “This measure would make clear to the world that Israel will not accept solutions that involve dangerous territorial concessions and that it is committed to its future as a secure Jewish state.” In other words, according to supporters of the bill, the only way to achieve a “secure Jewish state” is through the total annexation of all Palestinian territories and the expulsion of the arab population. That is, to carry through to the end the Nakba that began with the process of ethnic cleansing that allowed for the artificial founding of the State of Israel in 1948.

The vote followed a conference organized on Monday by five Likud lawmakers entitled “Sovereignty Now: Seizing the Window of Opportunity to Apply Sovereignty to Judea and Samaria” (as the West Bank territory is known), organized in cooperation with an NGO called The Sovereignty Movement.

The text of this Wednesday’s vote echoes that idea, stating: “The regions of Judea, Samaria, and the Jordan Valley are an inseparable part of the historic homeland of the Jewish people. In light of the events of October 7 and the broad national consensus opposing the idea of establishing a Palestinian state, there is a growing understanding of the need for a strategic, moral, and security initiative to secure our future in this land.”

The vote also comes as Israeli lawmakers and government officials have intensified formal discussions regarding the annexation of the Gaza Strip amid the ongoing genocide. On Tuesday, another Knesset conference, seemingly inspired by comments made by President Donald Trump, was organized by far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bazael Smotrich, entitled “The Gaza Riviera: From Vision to Reality.” “We will occupy Gaza and make it an inseparable part of Israel,” Smotrich said at the conference.

The plan for Gaza, which includes using starvation as a weapon of war and forcibly displacing the entire population to concentration camps in the south, built on the ruins of the bombed-out city of Rafah on the border with Egypt, has already generated an international reaction and a movement of solidarity with the Palestinian people which, despite the support of the main imperialist powers, has left Israel and its colonial project increasingly isolated.

Originally published in Spanish on July 24 in La Izquierda Diario.

Prepared and revised for Left Voice by James Dennis Hoff.