UN Special Rapporteur on the situation in the occupied Palestinian territories, Michael Lynk said, on Friday, that the US plan is “lopsided” and will only entrench occupation, according to the United Nations.
US President, Donald Trump, announced his administration’s ‘Vision for Peace, Prosperity and a Brighter Future’ at the White House, on Tuesday, which would legalize Israeli settlements in the West Bank, and annex 30 per cent of the West Bank.
What the US plan offers, on the other hand, is “a one and half state solution”, according to Michael Lynk, “This is not a recipe for a just and durable peace but rather endorses the creation of a 21st century Bantustan in the Middle East”, he said, referring to the homelands established for black South Africans during the apartheid era.
Lynk continued to find issue with the joint US/Israel agreement unilaterally presented, without consulting the Palestinian leadership, “The Palestinian statelet envisioned by the American plan would be scattered territory, completely surrounded by Israel, with no external borders, no control over its airspace, no right to a military to defend its security, no geographic basis for a viable economy, no freedom of movement and with no ability to complain to international judicial forums against Israel or the United States.”
Jerusalem, under the so called ‘peace plan’ would be considered Israel’s ‘undivided capital’, which, Mr. Lynk called distressing as it “recognizes the conquest and illegal annexation of East Jerusalem, which remains occupied territory under international law, as embedded in scores of United Nations resolutions”.
“International law is very clear: annexation and territorial conquest are forbidden by the Charter of the United Nations,” Michael Lynk said in June 2019, “The Security Council, beginning with Resolution 242 in November 1967, has expressly affirmed the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war or force on eight occasions, most recently in 2016.”
