Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has officially moved forward with a settlement expansion plan in the occupied West Bank that would make any future Palestinian state virtually impossible. The Israeli leader signed an agreement on Thursday to move ahead with the project, which would bisect the West Bank. "
We are going to fulfil our promise that there will be no Palestinian state. This place belongs to us,” Netanyahu said at the event in Maale Adumim, an Israeli settlement just east of Jerusalem.
“We are going to double the city’s population.” The development plan, which includes 3,400 new homes for Israeli settlers, would cut off much of the West Bank from occupied East Jerusalem while linking up thousands of Israeli settlements in the area; far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said settlements such as E1 will
help erase Palestine from the map, even as Palestinian statehood gains increasing recognition from UN member states.
“This reality finally buries the idea of a Palestinian state because there is nothing to recognise and no one to recognise,” Smotrich said.
21 countries, including the United Kingdom, Australia and Japan, condemned Israel’s plan to build its new settlement.
Germany announced on Thursday that it will
back a France-led proposal for a two-state solution, the Bloomberg news agency reported. Berlin is planning to support a UN resolution this week to adopt the New York Declaration, led by France and Saudi Arabia and calling for the creation of a Palestinian state and a
right to return for refugees. Belgium, France and Malta have
pledged to recognise a Palestinian state at the UN General Assembly session this month. Other countries, including Australia, Canada and the UK, have announced conditional recognitions, but it has remained unclear whether they will do so at the gathering.
Algeria’s ambassador to the UN, Amar Bendjama, said: “Israel behaves as if law does not exist, as if borders are illusions, as if sovereignty itself is a dispensable motion, as if the UN charter is an ephemeral text.” Noting Israel’s attacks on Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and “renowned peace broker” Qatar, he added:
“This is not strength, it is recklessness. It is a sign of madness. It is the conduct of an extremist government, emboldened by immunity [and] impunity. A government driving the region and the whole world toward the abyss.”
Allahu Akhbar@Al Jazeera