Israel blocks Ramallah meeting with Arab ministers, Israeli official says
JERUSALEM: Israel will not allow a planned meeting in the Palestinian administrative capital of Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank, to go ahead, an Israeli official said on Saturday, after Arab ministers planning to attend were stopped from coming.
The move, days after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's right-wing government announced one of the largest expansions of settlements in the West Bank in years, underlined escalating tensions over the issue of international recognition of a future Palestinian state.
Saturday's meeting comes ahead of an international conference, co-chaired by France and Saudi Arabia, that is due to be held in New York on June 17-20 to discuss the issue of Palestinian statehood, which Israel fiercely opposes.
The delegation of senior Arab officials due to visit Ramallah - including the Jordanian, Egyptian, Saudi Arabian and Bahraini foreign ministers - postponed the visit after 'Israel's obstruction of it', Jordan's foreign ministry said in a statement, adding that the block was 'a clear breach of Israel's obligations as an occupying force'.
The ministers required Israeli consent to travel to the West Bank from Jordan.
An Israeli official said the ministers intended to take part in 'a provocative meeting' to discuss promoting the establishment of a Palestinian state.
'Such a state would undoubtedly become a terrorist state in the heart of the land of Israel,' the official said. 'Israel will not cooperate with such moves aimed at harming it and its security.'
A Saudi source told Reuters that Saudi Arabia's Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al-Saud had delayed a planned trip to the West Bank.
Israel has come under increasing pressure from the United Nations and European countries which favour a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, under which an independent Palestinian state would exist alongside Israel.
French President Emmanuel Macron said on Friday that recognising a Palestinian state was not only a 'moral duty but a political necessity'.
Palestinians want the West Bank territory, which was seized by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war, as the core of a future state along with Gaza and East Jerusalem.
But the area is now criss-crossed with settlements that have squeezed some 3 million Palestinians into pockets increasingly cut off from each other though a network of military checkpoints.
The settlements are considered illegal by most countries, as the area is formally under military occupation but Israeli ministers talk openly of full annexation.
Defence Minister Israel Katz said the announcement this week of 22 new settlements in the West Bank was an 'historic moment' for settlements and 'a clear message to Macron'. He said recognition of a Palestinian state would be 'thrown into the dustbin of history.'
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