Israeli far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has advanced plans to build a settlement in the E1 area surrounding East Jerusalem and derail the creation of a Palestinian state.
The minister said on Thursday he would approve tenders for more than 3,000 housing units, effectively splitting the occupied West Bank in two.
He said the goal was to “bury” the prospect of Palestinian statehood, with campaigners calling the plan an explicit embrace of apartheid.
Although several bureaucratic hurdles remain, officials say infrastructure work could begin within months, with construction starting in about a year.
The announcement came shortly after Australia joined France, the UK and Canada in pledging to recognise Palestine as a state in September.
“This reality finally buries the idea of a Palestinian state, because there is nothing to recognise and no one to recognise,” Mr Smotrich said. “Anyone in the world who tries today to recognise a Palestinian state will receive an answer from us on the ground.
“Approval of construction plans in E1 buries the idea of a Palestinian state and continues the many steps we are taking on the ground as part of the de facto sovereignty plan that we began implementing with the establishment of the government."
E1 would fall between the Palestinian village of Al Zaim and the Israeli settlement of Maale Adumim, one of the biggest in the occupied West Bank. It would deal a huge blow to a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital.
E1 would expand the separation barrier that cuts the city off from the West Bank, undermining sovereignty, freedom of movement and the economy of a future Palestine.
The project has been frozen for decades due to condemnation by the international community.
Embracing apartheid
Israeli NGO Peace Now, which monitors the development of settlements, calls E1 “particularly devastating for the prospects of peace and the future of a two-state solution, as it would cut the West Bank in two and prevent the development of the metropolitan area between Ramallah, East Jerusalem and Bethlehem”.
Jordan condemned Mr Smotrich, calling the move "an aggression on the inalienable right of the Palestinian people to establish their independent, sovereign state on the June 4, 1967 lines, with occupied Jerusalem as its capital."
“The Israeli government is openly announcing apartheid,” said Aviv Tatarsky, a researcher at NGO Ir Amim. “It explicitly states that the E1 plans were approved to ‘bury’ the two-state solution and to entrench de facto sovereignty.
“States now working to recognise a Palestinian state should understand that Israel is undeterred by diplomatic gestures or condemnations. If they are serious about the prospect of peace, they must take concrete action.”
Qatar also rejected Israel's expansion of settlements and the forced displacement of the Palestinian people, "which aim to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state", its Foreign Ministry said.
Egypt criticised the plan, saying it "reflects the Israeli government's insistence on expanding its seizure of Palestinian lands and altering the demographic status of the territories it occupies", its Foreign Ministry said.
"This is a blatant violation of international law, relevant Security Council resolutions and international conventions."
A US State Department representative said only that "a stable West Bank keeps Israel secure and is in line with this administration's goal to achieve peace in the region", when asked about Mr Smotrich's plan.
The idea for E1 originated in the 1990s and reflects the long-term Israeli desire to expand settlements despite international objections. A more specific purpose of E1 is to connect Maale Adumim, currently separated from the outskirts of East Jerusalem, with the city.
Significant international opposition, including from the US, proved effective in blocking it, even as settlement expansion continued elsewhere in the occupied West Bank.
Since the Israel-Gaza war broke out on October 7, 2023, the wider settlement project has been in the ascendancy, including E1. Record numbers of Palestinians have been displaced by Israeli settlers who have access to more arms and enjoy greater impunity than before from the government and authorities.
On Wednesday, an Israeli settler shot and killed a Palestinian in the West Bank, the latest in a string of attacks by the Israeli army and settlers.
Nearly 1,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israel's army and its settlers in the West Bank since October 2023, UN figures have said.
Israel last year launched operation Iron Wall in the north of the occupied West Bank where more than 30,000 Palestinians remain forcibly displaced. Israeli forces have fired at people attempting to return home, the UN has said.
UPI facts
More than 2.2 million Indian tourists arrived in UAE in 2023
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Attacks on Egypt’s long rooted Copts
Egypt’s Copts belong to one of the world’s oldest Christian communities, with Mark the Evangelist credited with founding their church around 300 AD. Orthodox Christians account for the overwhelming majority of Christians in Egypt, with the rest mainly made up of Greek Orthodox, Catholics and Anglicans.
The community accounts for some 10 per cent of Egypt’s 100 million people, with the largest concentrations of Christians found in Cairo, Alexandria and the provinces of Minya and Assiut south of Cairo.
Egypt’s Christians have had a somewhat turbulent history in the Muslim majority Arab nation, with the community occasionally suffering outright persecution but generally living in peace with their Muslim compatriots. But radical Muslims who have first emerged in the 1970s have whipped up anti-Christian sentiments, something that has, in turn, led to an upsurge in attacks against their places of worship, church-linked facilities as well as their businesses and homes.
More recently, ISIS has vowed to go after the Christians, claiming responsibility for a series of attacks against churches packed with worshippers starting December 2016.
The discrimination many Christians complain about and the shift towards religious conservatism by many Egyptian Muslims over the last 50 years have forced hundreds of thousands of Christians to migrate, starting new lives in growing communities in places as far afield as Australia, Canada and the United States.
Here is a look at major attacks against Egypt's Coptic Christians in recent years:
November 2: Masked gunmen riding pickup trucks opened fire on three buses carrying pilgrims to the remote desert monastery of St. Samuel the Confessor south of Cairo, killing 7 and wounding about 20. IS claimed responsibility for the attack.
May 26, 2017: Masked militants riding in three all-terrain cars open fire on a bus carrying pilgrims on their way to the Monastery of St. Samuel the Confessor, killing 29 and wounding 22. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack.
April 2017: Twin attacks by suicide bombers hit churches in the coastal city of Alexandria and the Nile Delta city of Tanta. At least 43 people are killed and scores of worshippers injured in the Palm Sunday attack, which narrowly missed a ceremony presided over by Pope Tawadros II, spiritual leader of Egypt Orthodox Copts, in Alexandria's St. Mark's Cathedral. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attacks.
February 2017: Hundreds of Egyptian Christians flee their homes in the northern part of the Sinai Peninsula, fearing attacks by ISIS. The group's North Sinai affiliate had killed at least seven Coptic Christians in the restive peninsula in less than a month.
December 2016: A bombing at a chapel adjacent to Egypt's main Coptic Christian cathedral in Cairo kills 30 people and wounds dozens during Sunday Mass in one of the deadliest attacks carried out against the religious minority in recent memory. ISIS claimed responsibility.
July 2016: Pope Tawadros II says that since 2013 there were 37 sectarian attacks on Christians in Egypt, nearly one incident a month. A Muslim mob stabs to death a 27-year-old Coptic Christian man, Fam Khalaf, in the central city of Minya over a personal feud.
May 2016: A Muslim mob ransacks and torches seven Christian homes in Minya after rumours spread that a Christian man had an affair with a Muslim woman. The elderly mother of the Christian man was stripped naked and dragged through a street by the mob.
New Year's Eve 2011: A bomb explodes in a Coptic Christian church in Alexandria as worshippers leave after a midnight mass, killing more than 20 people.
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