UN chief warns Israel against West Bank annexation

Palestinian Authority's Foreign Minister Varsen Aghabekian speaks during a UN Security Council meeting on Gaza in light of ceasefire and hostage release at the UN HQ in New York City. Photo / AFP

A total or partial annexation of the West Bank by Israel “would constitute a most serious violation of international law”, the United Nations chief warned on Monday, denouncing statements by Israeli officials suggesting such a move.

Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told a Security Council meeting on the Middle East that the region was undergoing “profound transformation”, and that the ceasefire in Gaza between Israel and Hamas militants offered a “ray of hope”.

But he expressed worry over a situation in the occupied West Bank that “continues to worsen”, with clashes, airstrikes and “unabated illegal settlement expansion” by Israelis.

“Senior Israeli officials openly speak of formally annexing all or part of the West Bank in the coming months,” Guterres said.

“Any such annexation would constitute a most serious violation of international law.”

Guterres told the meeting he is “deeply concerned about an existential threat to the integrity and contiguity of the occupied Palestinian territory of Gaza and the West Bank”, as he addressed what he called “Israeli administrative changes” over the past two years that have streamlined and accelerated that country’s settlement expansion in the territory.

With Donald Trump returning to the US presidency on Monday, pro-settlement Israelis have revived their controversial aspiration of formally annexing swaths of the West Bank.

Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, himself a settler in the Palestinian territory, said recently that 2025 would be “the year of sovereignty in Judea and Samaria”, referring to the biblical name that Israel uses for the West Bank.

The territory was part of the British colony of Mandatory Palestine, from which Israel was carved during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, with Jordanian forces taking control of the West Bank during the same conflict.

Israel conquered the territory from Amman in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war and has occupied it ever since.

-Agence France-Presse