Ahmed Aboul Gheit, the secretary-general of the League of Arab States (LAS), has warned that Israel might use the COVID-19 outbreak as an opportunity to further expand its settlements into Palestinian areas of the West Bank and annex them, the LAS said on Monday
CAIRO (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 13th April, 2020) Ahmed Aboul Gheit, the secretary-general of the League of Arab States (LAS), has warned that Israel might use the COVID-19 outbreak as an opportunity to further expand its settlements into Palestinian areas of the West Bank and annex them, the LAS said on Monday.
Aboul Gheit has sent letters on the issue to UN Secretary-General Antonio Gutteres and a number of the foreign ministers, including Russia's Sergey Lavrov and the United States' Mike Pompeo.
"[There is] a clear and dangerous tendency among the Israeli [political] leaders, the [right-wing] Likud party in particular, to exploit the global emergency situation related to COVID-19 in order to expand settlements," the LAS said in a statement.
The statement added that the Israeli authorities wanted "to implement a plan on annexing lands of the occupied West Bank" amid the COVID-19 crisis.
Gheit has also called on Robert Mardini, the director-general of the International Committee of the Red Cross, to convince the Israeli government to release its Palestinian prisoners, who are in the most vulnerable state to the pandemic.
Earlier in the day, Israel's health ministry confirmed 11,235 coronavirus cases in the country with 110 fatalities. Meanwhile, Palestine has registered 271 cases, with 59 patients having recovered and two having died.
Tensions between Israel and Palestine escalated following the release of US President Donald Trump's widely panned peace plan in late January. Palestine has firmly rejected the so-called deal of the century, which envisions Israel annexing its settlements in the West Bank and keeping Jerusalem as its undivided capital.
