Arab foreign ministers have condemned a plan by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to annex parts of the occupied West Bank as “aggression” undermining any chances of a peace settlement with the Palestinians.
Netanyahu said on Tuesday he planned to annex the Jordan Valley, a large swathe of the occupied West Bank, if he wins a closely contested election just a week away.
Israel captured the West Bank in a 1967 war and Palestinians, who signed interim peace deals with Israel in the 1990s that include security cooperation, seek to make it part of a future state.
The Arab League “considers his announcement a dangerous development and a new Israeli aggression by declaring the intention to violate the international law,” Arab foreign ministers said in a statement after a meeting in Cairo.
“The league regards these statements as undermining the chances of any progress in the peace process and will torpedo all its foundations,” the statement said.
Arab foreign ministers had been holding a meeting in Cairo, seat of the Arab League, but added an emergency session after Netanyahu made his comments on live television.
Around 65,000 Palestinians and 11,000 Israeli settlers live in the Jordan Valley and northern Dead Sea area, according to the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem.
Read the article by Mahmoud Mourad in The Canberra Times.