US announcement to extend its scientific cooperation to illegal West Bank settlements and the occupied Syrian Golan Heights will neither redefine international law nor the United Nations Charter and affirms that annexation is an ongoing process under full US support, today said a statement issued by the Palestine Liberation Organization’s Negotiations Affairs Department.

“All Israeli colonial-settlements are illegal under international law. Attempts by the Trump Administration to normalize them, as clearly stated in their annexation plan (the so-called Peace to Prosperity plan), are an encouragement for Israel to perpetuate its control over the land and the people of Palestine and deny them their inalienable right to self-determination,” said the statement.

The Trump Administration's Middle East policy, including the normalization of relations between specific Arab regimes and Israel, is part of the same formula: normalizing Israel's occupation and its colonial settlement enterprise and annexation policies, it said.

The statement stressed that the international community has a responsibility, based on the Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice of 2004 and several UN resolutions, including 2334, to exclude Israeli settlements from any deals with Israel.

“Banning settlement products and services and taking action on companies operating in occupied Palestine is an international community's obligation to stop Israeli settlements,” said the Negotiations Affairs Department.

It reiterated its call upon all educational institutions worldwide not to cooperate or engage with any Israeli institution operating in the occupied State of Palestine.

“The latest open session at the United Nations Security Council affirmed the international community's vision to an end to Israel's occupation of the State of Palestine. It's accordingly evident that the new definitions adopted by the current US administration and the illegal policies derived from them are a threat to rules-based world order. These deformed policies will neither redefine international law nor the UN Charter,” it said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US Ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, signed an agreement in Ariel settlement extending the US and Israel's scientific cooperation to apply to the Israeli institutions in the illegal settlements located in the occupied West Bank and the Syrian Golan Heights, further giving legitimacy to the Israeli settlements in these territories deemed illegal by international law.

 

Source: Wafa News Agency