US Ambassador Warns Israel against Unilateral Annexation

US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman said Sunday in a message on Twitter that “the application of Israeli law to the territory which the [Trump Administration’s peace] Plan provides to be part of Israel is subject to the completion a mapping process by a joint Israeli-American committee” and warned that “any unilateral action in advance of the completion of the committee process endangers the Plan & American recognition.” On Saturday, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said Israel had begun drawing up maps of West Bank land it planned to annex. “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 rally in Ma’aleh Adumim, a large West Bank settlement just to the east of Jerusalem. Netanyahu said Israel would annex all Israeli settlements and the Jordan Valley in accordance with plans laid out by the Trump Administration. The Palestinians have expressed anger at such talk. “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 Rudeineh, spokesman for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.