In a statement, the Palestinian Foreign Ministry said that the Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi called his Palestinian counterpart Riyad Al-Maliki to express his country’s rejection of the “illegal” Israeli plans to annex West Bank, the Middle East Monitor reported.

Yi stressed that his country rejects the Israeli plans and calls for creating a sovereign Palestinian state along the 1967 borders on the basis of a two-state solution.

The Chinese official said that his country has been exerting efforts in order to encourage Israel to refrain from carrying out its plan “which could ignite a third intifada” and start an “open-ended escalation”.

He went on to reiterate his country’s support for the establishment of a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem al-Quds as its capital.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in announcing a deal with his rival Benny Gantz to form a unity government, has set July 1 for the start of cabinet discussions on extending “Israeli sovereignty” to Israeli settlements, illegal under international law, in the occupied West Bank and annexing outright the Jordan Valley.

The Palestinians have already threatened to cancel existing peace agreements if Netanyahu moves forward with his plan, while the European Union foreign policy chief said annexation would be a violation of international law and force the bloc to “act accordingly”. The UN’s Middle East envoy said such a step would “ignite” the region.