U.N.-backed human rights experts blast Israel annexation plan

A group of nearly 50 human-rights experts declared Tuesday that Israel’s looming plan to annex a large swath of Jewish settlements in the West Bank — which Palestinians and much of the rest of the world say is theirs — violates international law.

The plan, spearheaded by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has triggered worldwide debate as U.S. advisers appear split on the move, while several Arab and European nations have bluntly said that the annexation would violate international law and result in some European sanctions against Israel.

Palestinians, meanwhile, are bristling over the Trump administration’s rollout six months ago of a U.S.-drafted peace plan that would recognize Israeli control over vast but not explicitly specified portions of the West Bank.

Palestinian leaders have said settlement annexation now would be a death blow to any peace process and any further security cooperation with the Netanyahu government. Israeli settlers have said that a partial annexation could set preconditions for a Palestinian state on land that Israel does not claim.

In a joint statement, the band of dozens of United Nations-backed independent human-rights experts called on the international community to actively oppose the annexation, which is set to begin on July 1.

“The annexation of occupied territory is a serious violation of the Charter of the United Nations and the Geneva Conventions, and contrary to the fundamental rule affirmed many times by the United Nations Security Council and General Assembly that the acquisition of territory by war or force is inadmissible,” the experts’ statement said.

The group said that the existing Israeli occupation of the disputed territory has been a “source of profound human rights violations against the Palestinian people.”

“Israel has recently promised that it will maintain permanent security control between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River,” the group said. “Thus, the morning after annexation would be the crystallisation of an already unjust reality: two peoples living in the same space, ruled by the same state, but with profoundly unequal rights. This is a vision of a 21st Century apartheid.”