‘There will be no Palestinian state’: Netanyahu signs West Bank settlement expansion plan

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu signed an agreement on Thursday to push ahead with a controversial settlement expansion plan that would cut across land that the Palestinians seek for a state.

“There will not be a Palestinian state,” Netanyahu said during a visit to the Maale Adumim settlement in the West Bank where thousands of new housing units would be added.

The E1 project, which won final approval last month, would add 3,412 housing units in a 12-square-kilometre zone between East Jerusalem and Maale Adumim. Once completed, it could provide homes for up to 15,000 new residents, adding to the settlement’s current population of about 38,000.

Critics say the project would bisect the West Bank, sever East Jerusalem from Palestinian areas, and severely undermine the viability of a future Palestinian state. The plan has drawn strong criticism from European countries, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and others.

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Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney cited Israel’s advancement of E1 as one reason behind his decision to recognise a Palestinian state at the UN General Assembly later this month.

E1, along with Maale Adumim and Jewish neighbourhoods of East Jerusalem built beyond the Green Line, would form a block of Israeli settlements separating Ramallah to the north from Bethlehem to the south, as well as from Palestinian neighbourhoods in East Jerusalem.

With inputs from agencies