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Palestinians to Declare State If Israel Annexes Territory

Palestinians To Declare State If Israel Carries Out Annexation

(Bloomberg) --

Palestinians will declare an independent state and take steps on the ground to create governing institutions should Israel go ahead with plans to annex parts of the West Bank, according to Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh.

“If Israel is going to annex after July 1, we are going to go from an interim period of the Palestinian Authority into manifestation of a state on the ground,” Shtayyeh told journalists in the West Bank city of Ramallah. “We will call on the international community to recognize this fact.”

Israel has said it plans to annex some 30% of the West Bank, as endorsed in the Trump administration’s Middle East peace plan. Action could be taken as early as July 1, under the new Israeli government’s coalition agreement. The Palestinian Authority has halted security coordination with Israel and rejected a monthly tax transfer from Israel to protest the annexation.

The United Nations General Assembly voted to recognize Palestinians as an “observer state” in 2012, but the Palestinians took no steps on the ground to change the interim government set up under the 1993 Oslo Accords. On Tuesday, Shtayyeh said that a founding council would be named and a constitution declared if annexation went ahead.

The Palestinians, who seek to create an independent state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with east Jerusalem as their capital, wrote a counterproposal to the U.S. peace plan and gave it to the Quartet of Middle East peace mediators a few days ago, he said. “The peace process has reached a serious impasse,” he said.

Ismail Haniyeh, head of the Hamas movement that rules the Gaza Strip, said in an emailed statement that he has called on 40 Arab and Muslim leaders to hold an urgent emergency summit to discuss how to confront Israeli annexation plans that present “a real danger to the present and future of Palestine as well as the Arab and Islamic states.”

©2020 Bloomberg L.P.