UNITED NATIONS, June 5 — The Palestinian ambassador to the UN, surrounded by his counterparts from Arab and Muslim countries, called on the US yesterday to stop Israel’s annexation of its territories.

“I know that President (Donald) Trump is capable, and he has the tools to stop Netanyahu in his tracks, in order not to keep the whole region in turmoil...and to move in the direction of peace and justice, that is why the majority of us are working with them,” Riyad Mansour told press.

“We know that he told (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu, including recently, stop the nonsense in Lebanon, stop the craziness. You know you are not allowed to annex the land.”

The UN’s geopolitical bloc Arab Group joined the ambassador to express “deep alarm” and regional solidarity against “rapidly escalating” Israeli settler aggression and military violence against Palestinians.

“Israel continues to implement policies that amount to accelerated annexation and a systematic dismantling of Palestinian rights,” Saudi ambassador Abdulaziz Alwasil said on behalf of the bloc.

“The Group stresses that Israel’s recent measures are not isolated incidents but part of a coordinated strategy to entrench permanent control over Palestinian land, alter the demographic and geographic reality on the ground, and eliminate the possibility of the independence of the State of Palestine, as a sovereign, viable and contiguous State, in accordance with the relevant UN resolutions.”

Others from the intergovernmental Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) have echoed the demand to end Israel’s annexation of Palestinian territories in the West Bank, where settlement expansion continues, and in Gaza, where the Israeli army has taken control of at least half the territory.

Speaking on behalf of OIC, Turkish deputy ambassador Fikriye Asli Guven called on the Security Council “to take urgent and effective measures to halt all annexation activities, settlement expansion, forcible displacement, and other unlawful practices in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and to ensure accountability in accordance with international law.” — AFP