Abbas says all agreements with Israel OVER if Palestinian land annexed

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has said that all agreements signed with Israel will end if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu makes good on his promise to annex the West Bank’s Jordan Valley.

The agreements, presumably meaning the Oslo Accords –which set out joint Israeli-Palestinian governance and security responsibilities throughout the West Bank– would be null and void if Israel annexes any of the Palestinian territory it occupied in 1967, Abbas said on Tuesday evening.

“We have the right to defend our rights and achieve our goals by all available means, regardless of the consequences, as Netanyahu’s decisions contradict with United Nations resolutions and international law,” Abbas warned

Earlier that day, Netanyahu pledged to “apply Israeli sovereignty” to the Jordan Valley, which he described as “our eastern border, our defense wall.” The Jordan Valley accounts for 60 percent of the West Bank’s territory, and has been under full Israeli control since the signing of the Oslo Accords in the early 1990s.

Netanyahu’s promise was condemned by Palestinian officials, with the Palestine Liberation Organization’s Hanan Ashrawi telling AFP that Netanyahu’s plan “destroys all chances of peace.”

However, both Netanyahu and Abbas have made similar promises before. Netanyahu is currently fighting a tough re-election campaign, with Israelis heading to the polls next week to decide his future. He made a similar promise to annex the West Bank in April. Abbas has repeatedly threatened to suspend agreements with Israel, most notably in a 2015 speech before the UN General Assembly. This July, the Palestinian leader went one step further, announcing the suspension iof agreements, before Palestinian PM Mohammad Shtayyeh declared sovereignty over the entire West Bank a month later.

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