'Retract the plan': 21 countries to sign joint statement condemning Israel's West Bank settlement project

Britain and France were among 21 countries to sign a joint statement Thursday calling Israel’s approval of a major settlement project in the West Bank “unacceptable and a violation of international law”.

Israel approved the plans for the roughly 12-square-kilometre (five-square-mile) parcel of land known as E1 just east of Jerusalem on Wednesday.

“We condemn this decision and call for its immediate reversal in the strongest terms,” said the statement of foreign ministers, whose signatories also included Australia, Canada and Italy.

Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Ireland, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden also signed the statement, as did the European Commission’s foreign affairs chief.

The statement noted that Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said the plan “will make a two-state solution impossible by dividing any Palestinian state and restricting Palestinian access to Jerusalem”.

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“This brings no benefits to the Israeli people,” the foreign ministers said.

“Instead, it risks undermining security and fuels further violence and instability, taking us further away from peace.

“The government of Israel still has an opportunity to stop the E1 plan going any further. We encourage them to urgently retract this plan,” they added.

The plan seeks to build around 3,400 homes on the ultra-sensitive tract of land, which lies between Jerusalem and the Israeli settlement of Maale Adumim.

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.

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The Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority (PA) has slammed the latest move, which has also been criticised by UN chief Antonio Guterres and the head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, Philippe Lazzarini.

The project would “completely cut off the northern and central West Bank from the southern West Bank – meaning that there would no longer be any territorial contiguity”, said Lazzarini.

He said Israel was taking decisions that would make the creation of two states “increasingly impossible”.

Britain on Thursday summoned Israeli ambassador to the UK Tzipi Hotovely to the foreign ministry to protest the decision.

“If implemented, these settlement plans would be a flagrant breach of international law and would divide a future Palestinian state in two, critically undermining a two-state solution,” the foreign office said in a statement.