Palestinian leader to tell UN Security Council about proposal's legal hurdles

RAMALLAH－A senior Palestinian official said on Saturday that the US peace plan, proposed by President Donald Trump on Jan 28, includes 300 violations of international law.

Ahmad Majdalani, a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization Executive Committee, told reporters that President Mahmoud Abbas will present the violations next week before the United Nations Security Council.

"President Abbas will present a document that includes 300 violations of the international law by the 'Deal of the Century' while addressing the UN Security Council in New York next Tuesday," said Majdalani.

Abbas is scheduled to head to the United States on Monday and address the Security Council on the US peace plan on Tuesday. A draft resolution will be presented for voting before the council's members.

Majdalani said that the document that includes the violations of the international law and resolutions was prepared by the PLO.

"The US plan is based on denying the Palestinian presence and denying the right of the Palestinian people for self-determination," he said, adding "the plan is presenting itself as an alternative to the international resolutions."

However, Israel has begun to draw up maps of land in the occupied West Bank that will be annexed in accordance with the US peace plan, its Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Saturday.

"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," Netanyahu said at an election campaign rally in the Maale Adumim settlement.

Netanyahu said the area would include all Israeli settlements and the Jordan Valley－territory Israel has kept under military occupation since its capture in the 1967 Middle East war but which Palestinians want in a future state.

"The only map that can be accepted as the map of Palestine is the map of the Palestinian state on the 1967 borders with Jerusalem as its capital," said Nabil Abu Rdainah, spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Prospects for annexations, which have already been widely condemned, are unclear.

Israel will hold a national election on March 2 and Netanyahu, who is facing criminal corruption charges, is hoping to win a fifth term in office. He presently heads a caretaker government, whose legal authority to annex territory is still undecided by judicial authorities.

Settlers make up part of Netanyahu's right-wing voter base and many members of his coalition cabinet view the West Bank as the biblical heartland of the Jewish people.

Most countries consider Israeli settlements on land captured in war to be a violation of international law. Trump has changed US policy to withdraw such objections.

Trump's plan envisages a two-state solution with Israel and a future Palestinian state living alongside each other, but it includes strict conditions that Palestinians reject.

The blueprint gives Israel much of what it has long sought, including US recognition of settlements and Israeli sovereignty over the Jordan Valley.

On Friday, a Palestinian was shot dead by Israeli forces during clashes in the West Bank. The fatality brings to five the number killed in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem since Trump's plan was announced.

Xinhua - Agencies