Israel moves ahead with plan to bisect West Bank, wrecking Palestinian state hopes
Israel advances controversial E1 settlement plan, sparking condemnation and fears it will lead to ‘many more years of bloodshed’
Israel’s far-right finance minister said on Thursday that a contentious new settlement construction in the Israeli-occupied West Bank is going ahead – a project that Palestinians and rights groups worry will scuttle plans for a Palestinian state by effectively cutting the territory into two parts.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich boasted that the construction, which is expected to get final approval later this month, could thwart Palestinian statehood plans.
His announcement came as many countries, including Australia, Britain, France and Canada, said they will recognise a Palestinian state in September at the United Nations General Assembly.
The construction on a tract of land east of Jerusalem named E1 has been under consideration for more than two decades, and is especially controversial because it is one of the last geographic links between the major West Bank cities of Ramallah and Bethlehem.
The two cities are 22km (14 miles) apart by air. But once the E1 settlement project is completed, it will destroy the possibility of a direct route and will force Palestinians travelling between cities to continue taking a wide detour several kilometres out of their way, passing through multiple checkpoints, a process that adds hours to the journey.
“This reality finally buries the idea of a Palestinian state, because there is nothing to recognise and no one to recognise,” Smotrich said during a ceremony on Thursday. “Anyone in the world who tries today to recognise a Palestinian state will receive an answer from us on the ground.”