United Nations human-rights experts said on Tuesday that Israel’s plan to annex significant parts of the occupied West Bank would violate international law banning the taking of territory by force.
The joint statement was signed by nearly 50 independent experts. The signatories also voiced their dismay at US support for PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s “unlawful” plan to extend Israeli sovereignty via the de facto annexation of land that the Palestinians are seeking for a state.
The annexation of occupied territory “is a serious violation of the Charter of the UN and the Geneva Conventions, and contrary to the fundamental rule affirmed many times by the UN Security Council and General Assembly that the acquisition of territory by war or force is inadmissible,” the statement said.
What would be left of the West Bank after annexation of about 30 percent would amount to a “Palestinian Bantustan,” it added, in a reference to South Africa’s “homelands,” where black people were confined during apartheid, Reuters reported.