RAMALLAH, Monday, May 11, 2020 (WAFA) – Secretary-General of the PLO Executive Committee Saeb Erekat today stated that Ireland and Greece expressed their rejection of Israel’s prospective move to annex parts of the occupied West Bank.
Erekat tweeted that he had in-depth talks with Ireland’s foreign minister Simon Coveny as well as with Greece foreign minister Nikolaos Dendias, during which the European diplomats called for ending the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories and implementing the two-state solution based on the pre-1967 borders in line with international law.
He added that the European diplomats expressed their firm rejection of Israel’s illegal plan to apply Israeli sovereignty over, or in other words to annex, the Jordan Valley and the illegal colonial settlements in the occupied West Bank.
“Annexation will destroy any chance of a negotiated agreement between Palestinians and Israelis,” he reported Coveny as stating during their talks.
He pointed out that Dendias also expressed opposition to the construction of Israeli colonial settlements in the occupied West Bank and that Israeli practice of apartheid against the Palestinian people.
Both diplomats affirmed the need to continue to support the United Nations agency responsible for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) and discussed cooperation to fight the novel coronavirus spread.
On July 1, Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, will be able to vote on the annexation of large swaths of the West Bank on the basis of the US-touted Mideast plan, dubbed deal of the century, which in fact endorses Israel’s longstanding policy of permanent occupation, colonialism and apartheid over the Palestinian people.
Israeli Premier Benjamin Netanyahu has declared many times his willingness to annex the illegal colonial settlements besides to the Jordan Valley, a fertile strip of land running west along the Jordan River, which is home of some 65,000 Palestinians and makes up approximately 30 percent of the West Bank, upon the formation of the new coalition government.
The annexation of Palestinian territory occupied in 1967 is illegal under international law, and it would put much of the occupied West Bank under Israeli sovereignty, leaving only a few small pockets of densely populated Palestinian bantustans.
K.F.
