French President Emmanuel Macron has urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to push ahead with the plan to extend Israeli sovereignty to large parts of Judea and Samaria and the Jordan Valley, warning that it would violate international law and threaten long-term peace efforts.
The two leaders spoke by phone over the weekend, and Macron's office said in a statement that he told Netanyahu "to abstain from taking any measure to annex Palestinian territories." Macron also reiterated France's commitment to Israel's security and determination to work to calm tensions in the region.
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The controversial sovereignty bid was introduced as part of the US's Middle East peace plan, rolled out in January, and envisions applying Israeli law to about 30% of Judea and Samaria.
The plan has met fierce objections from the Palestinian Authority, which warned pushing it through would essentially render the 1993 Oslo Accords – the basis for the Israeli-Palestinian peace process – null and void. The United Nations, European Union, and Arab leaders have also warned Israel against moving ahead with its plan, saying it was in violation of international law and would all but doom the already moribund regional peace process.
The international community has invested billions of dollars in promoting a two-state solution since the 1990s.
Still, Netanyahu seems adamant to carry out the plan, which has been welcomed by Israel's religious and nationalist Right.
Netanyahu told Macron that decades of past peace efforts had led to failure and that Israel was prepared to negotiate on the basis of the plan introduced by US President Donald Trump, which "has new ideas that enable genuine progress," according to a statement from the prime minister's office.
The UN, EU, and leading Arab countries have all said that any Israeli sovereignty bid would violate international law and greatly undermine the prospects for Palestinian independence.
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