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JERUSALEM: More than 70 Israeli lawmakers passed a motion on Wednesday urging the government to impose sovereignty over the West Bank, though the symbolic move does not affect the Palestinian territory’s legal status.
The non-binding vote in Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, was backed by members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition, as well as some opposition lawmakers.
They said that annexing the West Bank “will strengthen the state of Israel, its security and prevent any questioning of the fundamental right of the Jewish people to peace and security in their homeland.”
“Sovereignty in Judea and Samaria” — the name Israel uses for the West Bank, which it has occupied since 1967 — was “an integral part of the realization of Zionism and the national vision of the Jewish people,” the text stated.
It passed by a vote of 71 to 13, with 36 other lawmakers absent.
Hussein Al-Sheikh, deputy to Palestinian Authority president Mahmud Abbas, said the motion was “a direct assault on the rights of the Palestinian people” that “undermines the prospects for peace, stability and the two-state solution.”
“These unilateral Israeli actions blatantly violate international law and the ongoing international consensus regarding the status of the Palestinian territories, including the West Bank,” he wrote on X.
Some 500,000 Israelis live in settlements in the West Bank, which is home to around three million Palestinians.
Israeli settlement there is regularly condemned by the UN and is considered illegal under international law.
It is seen as one of the main obstacles — along with ongoing violence between the two sides — to a lasting peace agreement through the creation of a viable Palestinian state with authority over the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

DAMASCUS: At least six people were killed and dozens injured in an explosion in northern Syria’s Idlib province, officials said Thursday.

There was no official statement on the cause of the blast.

The Syrian Civil Defense, also known as the White Helmets, reported that at least six people were killed in the blast, which took place in the town of Maarat Misrin north of the city of Idlib on Thursday.

“This is the death toll only of those recovered by Syrian Civil Defense teams, who continue to search for those trapped under the rubble,” the White Helmets said in a statement.

Syrian Minister of Emergency and Disaster Management Raed Al-Saleh in a post on social media platform X that teams were transporting the wounded and dead despite “continued recurring explosions in the area, which are hampering response efforts.”

The state-run news agency, SANA, reported four people killed and 116 injured, citing health officials, without giving further details.

Syria is struggling to recover from a nearly 14-year civil war that ended with the ouster of former President Bashar Assad in a lightning rebel offensive. During the war, which killed nearly half a million people and displaced half the country’s pre-war population of of 23 million, Idlib was an opposition-held enclave.

The country’s current interim President Ahmad Al-Sharaa formerly led Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham, an insurgent group based in Idlib that spearheaded the offensive that unseated Assad.