© Muammar Awad/ApaimagesView of a Palestinian refugee camp behind Israel's apartheid wall in east Jerusalem on 3 December 2014.
While the whole world is preoccupied battling the coronavirus, the US administration and the Israeli government has almost put the final touches to the maps of Palestinian areas in the occupied West Bank before approving them for annexation to the Jewish state.
This came in the weekly report released by the National Bureau for Defending Land and Resisting Settlement, an affiliate of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).
According to the report, an American-Israeli team is working nowadays on finalizing the maps of the Palestinians areas in the West Bank and Jerusalem to be annexed to Israel.
The National Bureau quoted Ir Amim, an Israeli activist non-profit, as saying that the Israeli government backed by US president Donald Trump is taking advantage of the coronavirus pandemic and preparing for its West Bank annexation plan.
The report warned that Israel continues to implement its plan to build and expand settlements in strategic areas inside the West Bank and Jerusalem in order to impose news faits accomplis that cannot be changed in the future.
It noted that Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu pledged recently during his talk over the phone with head of Yesha council and Jordan Valley regional council David Elhayani that Israel would establish its sovereignty over the Jordan Valley and the northern Dead Sea within a few months.
Comment: The International Middle East Media Center (IMEMC)
reports:
In a statement, issued by the Department for the Defense of Lands of the PLO, said that the Israeli government is currently exploiting world countries' engagement in fighting the Coronavirus by considering some annexation plans that would confiscate more Palestinian-owned lands, for illegal settlement purposes.
The statement referred to a report by the said department, in which the PLO noted that both the Israeli Likud party of Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu and the rival party, White and Blue, of Benny Gantz, have recently come to terms on enforcing Israeli supremacy on large areas of Palestinian-owned lands, by this summer.
The agreement between the two parties, according to the PLO's report, will include annexation of the Jordan Valley area of Alghour, north of the Dead Sea, with United States being involved in working out related Israeli annexation plans.
The PLO's statement denounced Washington's involvement in what it described as Israeli colonial settlement plans in contravention of international law and many United Nations resolutions pertaining to the occupation of Palestine.
The report revealed that Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has pledged, in a phone call, to the chief of Israeli colonial settlements council, David Elhiani, that Israel will wrestle full control over the Jordan Valley's Alghour area, in a few months time.
With respect to US involvement in such colonial plans, the report explained that a US delegation, headed by US ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, has held a series of meetings with Israeli tourism minister, Brev Livin, over the plans.
Such recent meetings, the report suggested, have focused on ways to make the plans go along with the January-declared deal of the century, announced by US president, Donald Trump. The deal suggests allowing Israel to annex West Bank lands, including a road in the south of West Bank city of Nablus, known as the Hawara bypass road.
The PLO also maintained that currently, Israel is going ahead with some other colonial settlement projects such as the E1 project, which aims at connecting the internationally-recognized occupied East Jerusalem and the Ma'ale Adumim colonial settlement in East Jerusalem, itself. Such a project would separate the southern West Bank from northern West Bank.
The E-1 area is carved out of Palestinian territory
The Palestine Liberation Organization is the internationally-recognized, sole representative for the Palestinian people, inside the occupied Palestinian territories and the Diaspora.
Since it signed the Oslo Peace Accords in 1993, recognizing Israel's right to exist, the PLO has led peace negotiations with Israel.
Over the past couple of years, PLO's ties with Washington has been severed after the US shut down PLO's representative office in the Washington, given PLO's rejection of Trump's recognition of East Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and cutting off annual financial aid to the Palestinian Authority, which is an organ of PLO.
Earlier this year, Trump, along with Israeli Premier, Netanyahu, announced Washington's vision for peace, known as the deal of the century. The deal was rejected by the United Nations, the Organization of the Islamic Conference, the Arab States League and other key international players.
Palestinians themselves unanimously and vehemently opposed the plan, for they believe it lacks the provision of even the most basic Palestinian national rights, while granting full Israeli supremacy over the West Bank, which it occupied in 1967.
Comment: The International Middle East Media Center (IMEMC) reports: