UK PM Johnson warns Israel against plan to annex parts of West Bank

JERUSALEM: British Prime Minister Boris Johnson warned Israel Wednesday against going ahead with plans to annex parts of the West Bank, calling them illegal and against the Jewish state's own interests.

"I am a passionate defender of Israel," he wrote in an article published in Hebrew on the front page of Israel's top-selling daily, Yediot Aharonot.

"So it is with sadness that I have followed the proposals to annex Palestinian territory," he added.

"I am fearful that these proposals will fail in their objective of securing Israel's borders and will be contrary to Israel's own long-term interests."

Israel's coalition government has agreed July 1 as the date from which it can begin implementing US President Donald Trump's Middle East peace proposal, which paves the way for annexations of Jewish West Bank settlements and potentially the Jordan Valley.

"Annexation would represent a violation of international law," Johnson wrote, adding that it would also jeopardise "the progress that Israel has made in improving relationships with the Arab and Muslim world.

"I still believe the only way to achieve true, lasting security for Israel, the homeland for the Jewish people, is through a solution that allows justice and security for both Israelis and Palestinians," Johnson wrote. "I refuse to believe that this is impossible."

Last month, in a rare op-ed in an Israeli newspaper, the Emirati ambassador to Washington, Yousef al-Otaiba, warned that annexation of parts of the West Bank would jeopardise any warming of Arab-Israeli ties.

Describing it as the "illegal seizure of Palestinian land", Otaiba said "plans for annexation and talk of normalisation are a contradiction".