In an embarrassment to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, right-wing lawmakers voted on Wednesday to pass, in its preliminary reading, a bill that would apply Israeli sovereignty to all West Bank settlements — as well as another, more limited bill to annex a major city-settlement — despite opposition from Netanyahu and most of his Likud party to announcing such a move at this time.

The bills must still pass three additional votes in the plenum and will now be referred to the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee for further consideration. It is highly unlikely that Netanyahu will allow either of the two bills to pass into law.

All but one Likud lawmaker boycotted the votes. MK Yuli Edelstein broke ranks to vote in favor, casting a decisive vote and helping the bill to annex all settlements scrape by 25-24.

In a statement, Edelstein said that he supported the measure because “Israeli sovereignty in all parts of our homeland is the order of the day,” and called on “all Zionist factions to vote in favor.”

In reaction, Likud decided to remove Edelstein from his seat on the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, a spokesperson for the lawmaker confirmed to The Times of Israel.

The initial approval of the annexation legislation came as US Vice President JD Vance was visiting Israel, and could potentially cause friction with Donald Trump’s administration, which has opposed annexation.

Sponsored by far-right MK Avi Maoz of the one-man Noam party — which was part of the coalition until it left earlier this year — the broader bill requires Israel to “apply its laws and sovereignty to the areas of settlement in Judea and Samaria to establish the status of these areas as an inseparable part of the sovereign State of Israel.”

“The Holy One, blessed be He, gave the people of Israel the Land of Israel. Settlement in the Land of Israel is the redemption and national revival, settlement is what makes the Land of Israel flourish after two thousand years of exile,” Maoz told lawmakers ahead of the vote.

“In applying sovereignty to Judea and Samaria, we are making a correction that is long overdue. Since the government has been procrastinating, our job as members of Knesset is to do this,” he added.

The bill was supported by the coalition’s far-right Otzma Yehudit and Religious Zionism parties, while the opposition United Torah Judaism party — which was until recently in the coalition — was split down the middle.

Speaking with The Times of Israel, Motti Babchik, a senior adviser to UTJ chairman Yitzhak Goldknopf, said that UTJ’s Agudat Yisrael faction had supported the bill in an effort to highlight the hypocrisy of........

© The Times of Israel