Germany criticizes Netanyahu’s annexation plan

<p>By Ayhan Simsek </p> <p>BERLIN (AA) – Germany on Monday criticized Israel’s new settlement plans and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s election pledge to annex Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank. </p> <p>Prime Minister Angela Merkel's government is “gravely concerned” by recent reports of the expansion of Israeli settlements, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Adebahr told a news conference in Berlin. </p> <p>“The federal government, as wall as our EU partners, consider these settlements in the Palestinian territories a violation of international law and one of the main obstacles to a negotiated two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians,” she said. </p> <p>Adebahr also criticized Netanyahu’s controversial pledge to annex Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank if he wins the national election this Tuesday. </p> <p>“We stand firmly behind the international agreed principles of a negotiated peaceful solution. The latest statements about plans for a unilateral annexation of parts of West Bank clearly contradict that,” she stressed. </p> <p>Israel occupied the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, during the 1967 Arab-Israeli War.</p> <p>International law views the entire West Bank as “occupied territory” and considers all Israeli settlement building there as illegal.</p> <p>Roughly 650,000 Jewish settlers currently live on more than 100 settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. </p> <p>The Palestinians, for their part, want both these territories — along with the Gaza Strip — for the establishment of a future Palestinian state. </p>