The warning was issued in a statement distributed by the German Foreign Ministry, according to Reuters.

These countries, along with most other European states, oppose Israeli plans that envisage annexing parts of the occupied West Bank as part of a Middle East scheme drawn up by US President Donald Trump’s administration and unveiled in January on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“We concur that any annexation of Palestinian territories occupied in 1967 would be a violation of international law,” the European and Middle Eastern foreign ministers said after their videoconference.

They added annexing parts of the Palestinian territories could also have consequences for the relationship with Israel.

Indonesia opposition

On Monday, Indonesia’s government and House of Representatives also censured Israel’s plan to annex Palestinian territories.

“President Joko Widodo fully supports our firm stance against the Deal of the Century, including the annexation of the West Bank by Israel,” Mardani Ali Sera, the deputy chairman of the Indonesian Committee for Inter-Parliamentary Cooperation (BKSAP) told Turkey’s Anadolu Agency.

Mardani said opposition to Trump’s so-called peace plan had been announced in a joint statement between the House and Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi.

He added that the House and the Foreign Ministry would continue to work together to mobilize international support against the plan.

Mardani also proposed establishing a special unit under the Indonesian Foreign Ministry to encourage Palestinian independence.

‘Aggression against Palestinians’

The Palestinian and Lebanese resistance movements, Hamas and Hezbollah, have censured Israel’s plan to annex large parts of the occupied West Bank as an act of “aggression against the Palestinian people”, calling for a united front against the US-backed land grab bid.

In a letter to Secretary General of Hezbollah Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah on Monday, Ismail Haniyeh, the head of the political bureau of Hamas, highlighted the “grave dangers” posed by Israel to the Palestinian cause, according to a statement by the Lebanese resistance group, Press TV reported.

“The Palestinian people are capable of confronting this plan,” the statement said, calling on Arab and Muslim nations and “free people of the world to quickly move to stop the occupation’s continuous aggression against the Palestinian people.”

According to Lebanon’s Al-Manar news website, the letter was handed by Hamas’ representative in Lebanon, Ahmad Abdul Hadi, and an accompanying delegation to Head of Hezbollah’s Palestinian File Hassan Hoballah.

The two sides reiterated their unified stance against the Israeli plot.

Hoballah reiterated Hezbollah’s support for the Palestinian struggles against Israel’s occupation, stressing that all the conspiracies against the Palestinian cause would be thwarted.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had set July 1 as the date for starting the annexation plan’s implementation, but the move faced delays amid internal rifts and as Tel Aviv awaits a green light from Washington.

The contentious plan would allow Tel Aviv to annex about 30 percent of the West Bank.

The scheme – which Trump calls the deal of the century – largely gives in to Israel’s demands while creating a Palestinian state with limited control over its own security and borders, enshrining the occupied Al-Quds as Israel’s “capital”.

Heiko expressed “our honest and serious concerns… about the possible consequences of such a step”.

Israel intends to annex West Bank settlements and the Jordan Valley, with initial steps slated to begin from July 1, the same day Germany takes the rotating EU presidency, AFP wrote.

“Together with the European Union, we believe that annexation would not be compatible with international law,” said Maas, following talks with his Israeli counterpart Gabi Ashkenazi.

The EU instead supports the renewal of Israeli-Palestinian talks to negotiate the so-called two-state solution, the German foreign minister said.

Israeli annexation forms part of a US plan unveiled in January.

It excludes core Palestinian demands such as a capital in East A-Quds and has been rejected by the Palestinian Authority.

Palestinians have sent a counterproposal for the creation of a “sovereign Palestinian state, independent and demilitarized” to the Quartet, made up of the UN, the US, the EU, and Russia, Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh said Tuesday.

“We want Israel to feel international pressure,” Shtayyeh said.

Maas is due to travel on to Jordan, from where he will hold a videoconference with Shtayyeh and meet with his Jordanian counterpart Ayman Safadi.

Last month Jordan’s King Abdullah II warned that Israeli annexation risked sparking a “conflict” with his country, speaking to German magazine Der Spiegel.

While Berlin shares Amman’s opposition to annexation, the EU is yet to outline retaliatory measures and sanctions would need the approval of all 27 member states.

Europe holds significant financial clout in Israel as its top business partner, with trade totaling 30 billion euros ($34 billion) last year, according to EU figures.

Some European countries could formally recognize a Palestinian state.

 

The rally took place at Tel Aviv’s Rabin Square on Saturday evening under the banner of “No to Annexation, No to Occupation, Yes to Peace and Democracy” under the watchful eyes of security forces, Press TV reported.

Police initially sought to block the demonstration over the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak but backtracked after meeting with organizers of the event.

Wearing face masks and adhering to social distancing guidelines, many of the protesters waved national Palestinian flags.

They also held signs reading, “No Democracy with Apartheid” and “Palestinian Lives Matter,” a nod to America’s Black Lives Matter movement.

Several participants held up pictures of Iyad Halak, an unarmed Palestinian autistic man who was recently shot dead by Israeli police in Al-Quds’ Old City.

The protest was organized by Israel’s Meretz party and the Hadash faction of the majority-Arab Joint List, along with rights groups.

Israeli lawmaker Nitzan Horowitz, the head of Meretz, told the crowd that the annexation scheme would be a “war crime” and bring about “bloodshed”.

“We cannot replace an occupation of dozens of years with an apartheid that will last forever,” he said. “Annexation is a war crime, a crime against peace, a crime against humanity, a crime that will result in bloodshed.”

“You have no mandate to approve this apartheid. You have no mandate to bury peace,” he added, noting that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was being pushed to take the controversial measure by the “messianic” administration of US President Donald Trump.

Israel’s new coalition, led by Netanyahu, plans to annex West Bank settlements and the Jordan Valley – some 30 percent of the West Bank – as of July 1.

Trump gave Tel Aviv the green light for the land grab in his self-proclaimed “deal of the century,” which was unveiled in January with the aim of legitimizing Israel’s occupation and redrawing the Middle East map.

Another Meretz lawmaker, Tamar Zandberg, denounced Trump’s Middle East plan as “a cursed deal between one man who’s trying to win an election and another who’s trying to escape a corruption trial,” referring respectively to Trump and Netanyahu.

The “deal of the century” would “officially make Israel an apartheid state… sovereignty without citizenship is apartheid,” she warned.

Joint List leader Ayman Odeh also spoke to the rally from quarantine by video link, saying all Jews and Arabs who support peace and justice must oppose Netanyahu’s annexation plan.

“Annexation is apartheid,” he told the protesters.

The organizers of the rally also screened a video address by US Democratic Senator Bernie Sanders.

“The plans to annex any parts of the West Bank must be stopped. The occupation must be ended and we must work together for a future of equality and dignity for all people in Israel and Palestine,” he said.

“It’s up to all of us to stand up to authoritarian leaders and to build a peaceful future for every Palestinian and every Israeli.”

Israeli police said five demonstrators were detained after resisting orders to evacuate. A photographer from the Haaretz newspaper was among those arrested.

Palestinian groups as well as the UN, Europe, and Arab states have strongly criticized Israel’s illegal push for consolidating its occupation.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry said in a tweet that “the international community has failed to solve the question of Palestine” for more than seven decades because “the plans proposed never corresponded with its (Palestine’s) historical facts and roots.”

“Iran believes that only Palestinians whether Muslim, Christian or Jew with a national referendum can and should decide for Palestine,” the ministry said.

The statement came ahead of the International Quds Day this Friday on which people around the world will hold rallies in support of the Palestinian cause and condemnation of Israeli atrocities against the people of Palestine.

Meanwhile, the European Union’s foreign policy chief warned Israel against acting on its “unilateral” decision to annex parts of the occupied Palestinian territory, saying the bloc will not recognize any such changes to the 1967 borders.

In a statement released on Monday, Josep Borrell said the EU viewed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s push for annexation with “grave concern.”

“International law is a fundamental pillar of the international rules-based order. In this respect, the EU and its member states recall that they will not recognize any changes to the 1967 borders unless agreed by Israelis and Palestinians,” he said.

“We strongly urge Israel to refrain from any unilateral decision that would lead to the annexation of any occupied Palestinian territory and would be, as such, contrary to international law,” the top EU diplomat added.

Borrell expressed the EU’s willingness to help restart Israeli-Palestinian talks, adding that the two-state solution “is the only way to ensure sustainable peace and stability in the region.”

Borrell had said Friday that the European nations “must work to discourage any possible initiative towards annexation” and such a strategy will require that states reach out to Israel, the US, the Palestinians and Arab partners “using all channels that the EU and the member states have.”

A key campaign promise of Netanyahu and his right-wing Likud party in recent Israeli elections was imposing Tel Aviv’s “sovereignty” over Israeli settlements and the strategic Jordan Valley in the occupied West Bank.

A coalition deal that Netanyahu recently signed with his chief rival, Benny Gantz, allows the cabinet to begin moving ahead with the annexation bid on July 1.

Presenting his new cabinet on Sunday, Netanyahu said Israel’s law should be extended over the West Bank areas.

“The truth is, and everyone knows it, that the hundreds of thousands of settlers in Judea and Samaria will always stay put in any future deal,” he said, referring to the occupied West Bank by its biblical name.

Netanyahu has time and again announced that he would start plans for annexing more areas in the occupied West Bank on July 1, in accordance with US President Donald Trump’s peace scheme, further infuriating Palestinians.

The American president officially unveiled his scheme, the so-called deal of the century, in January at the White House with Netanyahu on his side, while Palestinian representatives were not invited.

The proposal gives in to Israel’s demands while creating a Palestinian state with limited control over its own security and borders, enshrining the occupied Al-Quds as “Israel’s undivided capital” and allowing the regime to annex settlements in the West Bank and the Jordan Valley.

Press TV contributed to this story.