The Knesset, Israel’s parliament, voted in a symbolic, non-binding motion on Wednesday to support the full annexation of the occupied West Bank.

The vote passed in a 71-13 landslide.

“This is our land. This is our home,” Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana said after the vote, according to Israeli media. “The Land of Israel belongs to the people of Israel.”

Ohana defended Israel’s decades-long military occupation of the Palestinian territory as a return to the Jewish ancestral homeland.

“In 1967, the occupation did not begin; it ended, and our homeland was returned to its rightful owners,” he said. “We are the original first natives of this piece of land. Jews cannot be the ‘occupier’ of a land that for 3,000 years has been called Judea.”

Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, also known as the Six-Day War. Palestinians have long called for those three territories to form part of a future independent Palestinian state.

The symbolic vote was condemned by the Palestinian Authority (PA), which governs parts of the West Bank and is internationally recognized as the sole governmental entity of the Palestinian people.

The PA’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement that Wednesday’s vote is “a new declaration of war on the Palestinian people” calling it “another facet of the crimes of genocide, displacement, and annexation.”

The ministry added that it is “quintessentially colonial and racist act and an official Israeli acknowledgment of the goals of genocidal crimes and the entrenchment of separation between the West Bank and Gaza.”

PA Vice President Hussein al-Sheikh also slammed the vote.

“These unilateral Israeli actions blatantly violate international law and the ongoing international consensus regarding the status of the occupied Palestinian territories, including the West Bank,” al-Sheikh wrote on X.

The resolution was initiated by far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, according to Al Jazeera. A similar motion rejecting Palestinian statehood passed by a wide margin last year.

According to official Israeli and Palestinian statistics, the West Bank is home to roughly 3 million Palestinians and about 500,000 Israeli settlers.

The vote was also condemned by the Arab League and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, according to the official Palestinian news agency Wafa.