A senior Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) official Thursday welcomed the European Union’s letter warning Israel against the prospective move to annex parts of the West Bank.
Secretary-General of the PLO Executive Committee Saeb Erekat welcomed the joint EU letter warning Israel of the consequences of proceeding with its illegal plan to apply sovereignty over, or in other words to annex, the Jordan Valley and the illegal colonial settlements in the occupied West Bank.
Erekat welcomed the EU’s joint message to Israel, in which UK, France, Belgium, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden, among other EU countries, said that “annexation of any part of the West Bank would be a violation of international law.”
“Such unilateral steps will harm efforts to renew the peace process and will have grave consequences for regional stability as well as Israel’s standing in the international arena,” they added.
Erekat added that the Palestinian leadership was maintaining diplomatic international contacts in order to prevent Israel from implementing its annexation plan.
On July 1, Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, will be able to vote on the annexation of large swaths of the West Bank in line with 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.
