Former United Nations secretary general Ban Ki-moon warns that “ Israeli annexation of parts of the West Bank would not only be an act of aggressive folly, it would have a destructive influence on global rights and norms.”
The statement was part of a call by a group of former international statesmen and women founded by the late Nelson Mandela.
The statement calls for a new Middle East peace plan to counter the “Israeli annexation threat.”
A new initiative in the spirit of the Madrid Peace Conference of 1991 is needed to bring both Israelis and Palestinians, as well as regional and international powers, into meaningful dialogue on the way forward. Existing multilateral mechanisms like the Quartet should be revitalized and potentially expanded to give a greater role to other powers in the region, the statement adds.
It further warns that “annexation plans represent a unilateral repudiation of the two-state solution,” and risk “ plunging the region into deeper turmoil, further fomenting bitterness and alienation among Palestinians, antagonising Israel’s neighbours and eroding the democratic and constitutional framework of the Jewish state.”