French President Emmanuel Macron has asked Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to go ahead with plans to annex Palestinian territory in the West Bank
During a telephone call between the two leaders on Thursday, Mr Macron "emphasised that such a move would contravene international law and jeopardise the possibility of a two-state solution as the basis of a fair and lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians", his office said.
Mr Macron's call adds to pressure from European leaders for Mr Netanyahu to drop plans to annex Jewish settlements in the West Bank and the strategic Jordan Valley.
The controversial move was endorsed in a Middle East plan unveiled by US President Donald Trump in January.
Israel's government had set July 1 as the date when it could begin taking over the Palestinian areas, where the population of Israeli settlers has grown since the 1967 Six-Day War.
The foreign ministries of France and Germany, along with those of Egypt and Jordan – the only Arab states to have peace deals with Israel – warned this week that any annexation could have "consequences" for relations.
The annexation plan has raised tensions in the West Bank and sparked protests in the occupied Palestinian territory was well as in the Gaza Strip.
Late on Thursday, Israeli troops shot and killed a Palestinian man and injured another in the West Bank's Salfit governorate.
The Israeli army said troops fired at two Palestinians who were throwing Molotov cocktails at a guard post near the village of Kifl Haris, but Salfit Governor Abdallah Kmail said they opened fire “for no reason" as the men were walking through the village.
He identified the man killed as 29-year-old Ibrahim Abu Yakoub.
Elsewhere in the West Bank, Israeli security forces clashed with around 30 hardline Jewish settlers overnight who were trying to rebuild an unauthorised outpost in a closed military zone. The Border Police said the settlers blocked roads and attacked its forces, lightly wounding two officers.
It said 20 people were detained for questioning. There were no reports of any serious injuries among the settlers.
Nearly 500,000 Jewish settlers live in the occupied West Bank, which Israel seized in the 1967 war and which the Palestinians view as the heartland of their future state. The territory is home to around 2.5 million Palestinians.
The Palestinians and most of the international community view the settlements as illegal and an obstacle to peace. The Trump administration has broken with decades of US policy by saying it does not consider the settlements to be illegal, and the Trump plan would allow Israel to eventually annex all of them.
White hydrogen: Naturally occurring hydrogen
Chromite: Hard, metallic mineral containing iron oxide and chromium oxide
Ultramafic rocks: Dark-coloured rocks rich in magnesium or iron with very low silica content
Ophiolite: A section of the earth’s crust, which is oceanic in nature that has since been uplifted and exposed on land
Olivine: A commonly occurring magnesium iron silicate mineral that derives its name for its olive-green yellow-green colour
Brief scores:
Liverpool 3
Mane 24', Shaqiri 73', 80'
Manchester United 1
Lingard 33'
Man of the Match: Fabinho (Liverpool)
Six large-scale objects on show
- Concrete wall and windows from the now demolished Robin Hood Gardens housing estate in Poplar
- The 17th Century Agra Colonnade, from the bathhouse of the fort of Agra in India
- A stagecloth for The Ballet Russes that is 10m high – the largest Picasso in the world
- Frank Lloyd Wright’s 1930s Kaufmann Office
- A full-scale Frankfurt Kitchen designed by Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky, which transformed kitchen design in the 20th century
- Torrijos Palace dome
Results
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HER%20FIRST%20PALESTINIAN
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Farage on Muslim Brotherhood
Nigel Farage told Reform's annual conference that the party will proscribe the Muslim Brotherhood if he becomes Prime Minister.
"We will stop dangerous organisations with links to terrorism operating in our country," he said. "Quite why we've been so gutless about this – both Labour and Conservative – I don't know.
“All across the Middle East, countries have banned and proscribed the Muslim Brotherhood as a dangerous organisation. We will do the very same.”
It is 10 years since a ground-breaking report into the Muslim Brotherhood by Sir John Jenkins.
Among the former diplomat's findings was an assessment that “the use of extreme violence in the pursuit of the perfect Islamic society” has “never been institutionally disowned” by the movement.
The prime minister at the time, David Cameron, who commissioned the report, said membership or association with the Muslim Brotherhood was a "possible indicator of extremism" but it would not be banned.
