Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday pledged to annex parts of the occupied West Bank in the coming months, despite criticism from key allies.

The Palestinians want the entire West Bank as the part of a future independent state, and annexing large chunks of this territory risks jeopardizing the faint remaining hopes of a two-state solution.

In an apparent reference to the friendly administration of President Donald Trump, Netanyahu said Israel had a "historic opportunity" to redraw the Mideast map that could not be missed. Israeli media quoted him as saying he would act in July.

"This is an opportunity that we will not let pass," he told members of his conservative Likud party. He added that the "historic opportunity" to annex the West Bank had never before occurred since Israel's founding in 1948.

Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Mideast war. It has settled nearly 500,000 Jewish settlers in the territory, but never formally claimed it as an Israeli territory due to stiff international opposition.

A Donald Trump Mideast plan, unveiled in January, envisions leaving some 30 percent of the territory under permanent Israeli control while giving the Palestinians expanded autonomy in the rest of the area. The Palestinians have rejected the plan, saying it is unfairly biased toward Israel.

The plan has already exposed a partisan divide in Washington. Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee in the U.S. presidential elections, recently said that annexation would "choke off" hopes for a two-state solution. 18 Democratic senators warned in a letter this week that annexation could harm U.S.-Israeli ties.

The EU's foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, has said annexation would violate international law and vowed to use "all our diplomatic capacities" to stop it.