Israel announces West Bank settlement that rights groups say could imperil Palestinian state
The announcement comes as many countries, including Australia, Britain, France, and Canada said they would recognize a Palestinian state in September.
'This reality finally buries the idea of a Palestinian state, because there is nothing to recognize and no one to recognize,' said Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich during a ceremony on Thursday. 'Anyone in the world who tries today to recognize a Palestinian state — will receive an answer from us on the ground,' he said. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not publicly comment on the plan on Thursday, but he has touted it in the past.
Development in E1, an open tract of land east of Jerusalem, has been under consideration for more than two decades, but was frozen due to U.S. pressure during previous administrations. On Thursday, Smotrich praised President Donald Trump and U.S. ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee as 'true friends of Israel as we have never had before.'
The E1 plan is expected to receive final approval Aug. 20, capping off 20 years of bureaucratic wrangling. The planning committee on Aug. 6 rejected all of the petitions to stop the construction filed by rights groups and activists. 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.
The approval is a 'colonial, expansionist, and racist move,' Ahmed al Deek, the political adviser to the minister of Palestinian Foreign Affairs, told The Associated Press on Thursday.
'It falls within the framework of the extremist Israeli government's plans to undermine any possibility of establishing a Palestinian state on the ground, to fragment the West Bank, and to separate its southern part from the center and the north,' al Deek said.
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