FORMER ISRAELI NEGOTIATOR SAYS ANNEXATION VIOLATES OSLO ACCORDS

Unilaterally annexing parts of the West Bank would be a clear and substantive violation of the Oslo Accords, according to Joel Singer, the attorney who represented Israel in negotiating the accords and ultimately drafted them, Noa Landau wrote for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz on June 10, 2020.

“Unilaterally annexing West Bank areas will violate the Oslo Accords,” he told Haaretz on Tuesday, June 9, 2020kuNE . “Article 31 (8) of the 1995 Israel-PLO Interim Agreement states that the ‘status of [the West Bank and the Gaza Strip] will be preserved during the Interim Period.’”

“Further, the agreement contains a clear undertaking that ‘[n]either party shall initiate or take any step that will change the status of the West Bank and Gaza Strip pending the outcome of the permanent status negotiations.’ (Article 31(7)). Since the status of the West Bank is that of an autonomous area under Israeli supreme authority, unilaterally annexing portions of the West Bank to Israel clearly constitutes a material violation of the Oslo Accords.”

Nevertheless, he stressed, “So is declaring an independent Palestinian state there.” Consequently, “the only way for Israel to assert that its planned West Bank annexation does not violate the Oslo Accords is to argue that the accords are no longer valid because the PLO or the PA have already rescinded the Accords either by declaring them void or by violating them in such a material manner that they are no longer in force.”