Israel drawing maps of annexed West Bank territories: PM Netanyahu

Israel has begun to draw maps of the land in the occupied in the West Bank that will be annexed as per US president’s Donald Trump’s Middle East Plan, Israeli PM Netanyahu said on Saturday. Netanyahu, while campaigning for the upcoming elections in Maale Adumim settlement said, “We are already at the height of the process of mapping the area that, according to the Trump plan, will become part of the state of Israel. It won’t take too long.”

Area would include Jordan valley

Netanyahu said that the area would include all Israeli settlements and the Jordan Valley. The valley area is the territory Israel has kept under military occupation since its capture in the 1967 Middle East war but which Palestinians demand it in their future state. Nail Abu Rdainah, spokesman for the Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas said that the only map that can be accepted as the map of Palestine is the with the 1967 borders and has Jerusalem as its capital. 

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After, Trump's Middle East Plan, Groups of Palestinians gathered on Friday in the West Bank village of Bilin to protest US President Donald Trump's plan to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. They burned tyres by the separation barrier and one protester climbed a ladder to place a Palestinian flag atop the barrier.

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Both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority have rejected Trump's plan, which would allow Israel to annex all of its Jewish settlements, along with the Jordan Valley, in the occupied West Bank. The Palestinians were offered limited self-rule in Gaza, parts of the West Bank and some sparsely populated areas of Israel in return for meeting a long list of conditions. Hamas has vowed that "all options are open" in responding to the proposal, but is not believed to be seeking war with Israel. Meanwhile, President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan denounced the Israeli-Palestinian peace truce on January 29 and called it 'completely unacceptable'. 

(with inputs from agencies)