Israel announces West Bank settlement that ‘could imperil Palestinian state’
Israel’s far-right finance minister has announced a contentious new settlement construction in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Palestinians and rights groups worry the move will scuttle plans for a future Palestinian state by effectively cutting the West Bank into two separate parts.
The announcement on Thursday comes as many countries said they would recognise a Palestinian state in September.
“This reality finally buries the idea of a Palestinian state, because there is nothing to recognise and no one to recognise,” said finance minister Bezalel Smotrich.
“Anyone in the world who tries today to recognise a Palestinian state will receive an answer from us on the ground.”
Trump
Development in E1, an open tract of land east of Jerusalem, has been under consideration for more than two decades but was frozen because of US pressure during previous administrations.
On Thursday, Mr Smotrich praised President Donald Trump and US ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee as “true friends of Israel as we have never had before”.
The E1 plan has not yet received its final approval, which is expected next week.
It includes around 3,500 apartments to expand the settlement of Maale Adumim, Mr Smotrich said.
While some bureaucratic steps remain, if the process moves quickly, infrastructure work could begin in the next few months and construction of homes could start in around a year.
Rights groups swiftly condemned the plan.
“Deadly”
Peace Now called it “deadly for the future of Israel and for any chance of achieving a peaceful two-state solution” which is “guaranteeing many more years of bloodshed”.
The announcement comes as the Palestinian Authority and Arab countries condemned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s statement in an interview on Tuesday that he was “very” attached to the vision of a “Greater Israel”.
He did not elaborate, but supporters of the idea believe that Israel should control not only the occupied West Bank but parts of Arab countries.
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Does the world need any more evidence that the evil, zionist government just wants to ethnically cleanse an entire semitic Palestinian population?
Only Trump seems to have any influence on Netanyahu.The continued illegal expansion on the West Bank has already been condemned around the World . Will Trump finally find some backbone and bring an end to this?
No it doesn’t Amir. There is more than enough evidence in the can already to convict all of the criminals guilty and complicit in this atrocity. We are now near entering a laborious, decades long, Simon Wiesenthal worldwide Nazi hunt just as soon as the head honchos realise that they had better run for the hills of some far away country they will pay to protect them. The comparisons with the World War 2 aftermath are now undeniable and will come to pass.
What’s the point of the UN or it’s charters when we have Israel arrogantly state that they intend building further settlements in the occupied West Bank to end any hope of a Palestinian state?
Occupied Gaza, occupied West Bank, occupied East Jerusalem. Occupied = ILLEGAL! Further settlements, armed settler murderers protected and backed by the IDF, slaughter, starvation, displacement, expansion, expulsion, eradication – ILLEGAL! If the world does not end this evil and hold those responsible fully to account through the legal process with punishment to follow, then it is all over for us all.
In a world in which Trump is very considerably calling the shots, personally and wholly according to his whims and prejudices, what he says and what he decides now carry much more clout than do international agreements hammered out seventy or eighty years ago.
If anyone had suggested to me even twenty years ago that in my lifetime I’d see a world where one single individual man could amass that degree of power, I’d have been totally incredulous and dismissive. But that seems to be where we now are.