By: Fern Sidman

Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned on Wednesday night that a Knesset measure advancing Israeli sovereignty in Judea and Samaria risks imperiling President Donald Trump’s much-touted plan to end the war in Gaza, setting up a fraught transatlantic confrontation as senior American envoys intensify diplomacy in Jerusalem.

Rubio’s comments came after the Knesset approved a bill in a preliminary reading by the  narrow margin of a single vote — 25 in favor, 24 opposed — a tally that crystallizes how politically brittle Israeli moves on territory remain even inside a government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The vote, reported on by Israel National News on Wednesday, underscored deep fissures within Netanyahu’s own camp: most Likud members either abstained or were absent, and only MK Yuli Edelstein broke ranks to back the measure despite an explicit party directive. Israel National News reported the tally and the defections as a sign of the coalition’s tenuous internal balance.

Rubio, who was scheduled to land in Israel on Thursday for a 48-hour visit, told reporters and diplomats that unilateral steps to extend Israeli law over parts of the West Bank would complicate — if not derail — the international architecture now being assembled to stabilize Gaza and disarm Hamas. According to the report at Israel National News, Rubio also said that states beyond the Middle East have expressed readiness to participate in an international stabilization force for Gaza — one of the central security guarantees in Trump’s peace framework.

The narrow Knesset outcome reflects both tactical maneuvering and profound strategic disagreement in Jerusalem. The preliminary sovereignty vote advanced despite a conspicuous absence in the plenum by many senior ministers; Blue and White and Shas, like most of Likud, did not record votes. Meanwhile, Yisrael Beytenu chairman MK Avigdor Liberman pushed through a separate proposal to apply Israeli sovereignty over Ma’ale Adumim, which passed by a much wider 32-9 margin, the Israel National News report noted. The mixed results reveal a patchwork of political priorities and underline that legal measures are being used as instruments in a larger political calculus.

The State Department framed Rubio’s trip as part of a coordinated American effort to shepherd implementation of the “Comprehensive Plan to End the Conflict in Gaza.” A U.S. announcement cited in the Israel National News report said Rubio would use the visit to “reaffirm America’s unwavering commitment to Israel’s security” and to press partners to “build on the historic momentum towards durable peace and integration in the Middle East.” Yet the secretary’s public admonition about the sovereignty vote exposed a growing dissonance: Jerusalem’s domestic imperatives are colliding with Washington’s diplomatic sequencing, and the friction could have operational consequences for how the U.S. leads the reconstruction and demilitarization phases in Gaza.

For Prime Minister Netanyahu, the episode is politically awkward. Israel National News reported that party discipline frayed under the pressure of competing demands: hard-line coalition partners demanded assertive sovereignty steps, while U.S. pressure — articulated most recently by President Trump himself, who last month said he would “not allow” unilateral annexation — counseled restraint. Netanyahu’s own position has been cautious; reports indicate he signaled to ministers that timing and method mattered, yet he stopped short of a veto that would have guaranteed the bill’s failure. The result: a legislative skirmish that crystallizes a broader question about who sets Israel’s strategic timetable — Jerusalem or its most consequential ally.

Beyond raw politics, the legal mechanics matter. A preliminary reading is only the first step in the Knesset’s legislative process; bills must still pass further readings and committee review before becoming law. Israel National News has repeatedly emphasized that advocates intend to press the measure through the full legislative gauntlet. Proponents frame sovereignty as a fulfillment of Israel’s historic and security claims; critics warn it would upend the delicate diplomatic architecture the Trump administration has spent weeks building with regional partners.

Rubio’s warning also intersected with the diplomatic choreography already underway in Israel. His arrival followed this week’s visits by Vice President J.D. Vance and President Trump’s envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, who have been urging Israeli leadership to maintain the ceasefire and focus on the next phase of the Gaza plan: disarmament, humanitarian relief, and reconstruction under international supervision. Israel National News reported extensively on those visits and on Vance’s blunt message that “if Hamas doesn’t cooperate, it will be obliterated,” language that highlighted U.S. support for robust measures against continued terrorist activity while also signaling the American preference for political and multilateral fixes in the immediate term.

U.S. officials worry that unilateral moves on Judea and Samaria would embolden opponents of the peace plan across the region and among the international community, jeopardizing commitments from Arab states and Muslim-majority contributors to the proposed stabilization force. Rubio cautioned that such a breakdown could deprive the administration of the very partners it needs to field multinational security contingents and open the door to renewed fighting rather than reconstruction. Israel National News quoted diplomatic sources saying the administration believes the international force will be pivotal to preventing an immediate return to combat.

The domestic optics in Israel are acute. Hard-line ministers and nationalist activists hailed the preliminary reading as a historic step toward extending Israeli sovereignty over territory many see as core to the national identity. Israel National News published interviews with right-wing leaders framing the vote as both a moral claim and a strategic imperative in the wake of recent security gains. Conversely, centrist and dovish members of the Knesset cautioned that the timing was reckless; they stressed that with Gaza still fragile and Hamas violent, Jerusalem needed Washington’s full cooperation, not diplomatic friction.

The passage also raises questions about legal and administrative mechanics. Applying sovereignty would require amendments to civil law and to the apparatus that currently governs Palestinian population centers in Judea and Samaria, which operate under a complex mosaic of military and civil jurisdictions. That process, Israel National News observed, could create immediate governance and humanitarian complications — complications that Washington fears could be used to portray the Gaza stabilization effort as a pretext for altering the status quo elsewhere.

For now, the immediate diplomatic contest will play out in the days of Rubio’s visit. The secretary is set to meet senior Israeli officials, review implementation plans for the ceasefire and press for coordination among donors and security partners. Israel National News reported that U.S. diplomatic channels will underscore a central message: reconstruction and disarmament must proceed in tandem, and unilateral steps on sovereignty risk unravelling the fragile consensus.

The friction is emblematic of the larger strategic dilemma confronting Israel and its allies: how to translate battlefield gains and domestic political imperatives into a sustainable political order that secures Israel without provoking an international backlash that could set back the very goals Jerusalem seeks. As Israel National News has noted in recent commentary, the Knesset vote — and Rubio’s admonition — reflect a country wrestling with the limits of independence when global partnerships remain essential to achieving lasting peace.

Whether the narrow preliminary reading ultimately becomes law, and whether that would trigger an American recalibration of support for the Trump plan, remains uncertain. What is no longer in doubt is that the narrow political margin in Jerusalem has global ramifications: a single ballot in the Knesset can reverberate from the halls of the Israeli parliament to the corridors of Washington and to the fields of Gaza — shaping whether a fragile ceasefire becomes a durable peace or merely a pause before the next war.