Israeli, U.S. statements on West Bank annexation violation of int'l law: UN expert

Recent statements by Israeli political leaders and U.S. diplomats supporting the annexation of parts or all of the occupied West Bank by Israel are at variance with the ban on the annexation of occupied territories, a United Nations (UN) rights expert said here on Thursday.

"International law is very clear: annexation and territorial conquest are forbidden by the Charter of the United Nations," Michael Lynk, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, said in a statement.

"The (UN) 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," he said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had said during his electoral campaign in April that he would start extending Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank settlements if re-elected.

Then U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman was quoted in early June as saying that annexing parts of the West Bank is an Israeli right.

Lynk said that since World War Two, the nations of the world have accepted that allowing war and conquest to remain a legitimate policy of modern statecraft is a folly.

"Without this absolute prohibition, acquisitive states would have a strong incentive to obfuscate the origins of the territorial acquisition, leading us backwards to the days when borders were impediments to overcome rather than frontiers to respect."

Lynk noted that the instances of annexation have significantly decreased since 1948.

"The power of the prohibition is that annexations in the modern world, when they do happen, are rarely recognized by other nations. International law, when married to international resolve, works."