JERUSALEM (AFP) — Israel approved a major settlement project on Wednesday in an area of the occupied West Bank that the international community has warned threatens the viability of a future Palestinian state.
Israel has long had ambitions to build on the roughly 12-square-kilometer parcel known as E1 just east of Jerusalem, but the plan had been stalled for years amid international opposition.
The latest announcement also drew condemnation, with United Nations chief Antonio Guterres saying the settlement would effectively cleave the West Bank in two and pose an “existential threat” to a contiguous Palestinian state.
Last week, Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich backed plans to build around 3,400 homes on the ultra-sensitive tract of land, which lies between Jerusalem and the Israeli settlement of Maale Adumim.
“I am pleased to announce that just a short while ago, the civil administration approved the planning for the construction of the E1 neighborhood,” the mayor of Maale Adumim, Guy Yifrach, said in a statement on Wednesday.
All of Israel’s settlements in the West Bank, occupied since 1967, are considered illegal under international law, regardless of whether they have Israeli planning permission.
The Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority (PA) slammed the latest move.
“This undermines the chances of implementing the two-state solution, establishing a Palestinian state on the ground, and fragments its geographic and demographic unity,” the PA’s foreign ministry said in a statement.
It added the move would entrench “division of the occupied West Bank into isolated areas and cantons that are disconnected from one another, turning them into something akin to real prisons, where movement is only possible through Israeli checkpoints and under the terror of armed settler militias.”
Israel heavily restricts the movement of West Bank Palestinians, who must obtain permits from authorities to travel through checkpoints to cross into east Jerusalem or Israel.
Guterres repeated a call for Israel to “immediately halt all settlement activity,” warning that the E1 project would be “an existential threat to the two-State solution,” his spokesperson said.
British Foreign Secretary David Lammy also rejected the plans, saying it would “divide a Palestinian state in two (and) mark a flagrant breach of international law.”
