Israel’s plan for massive new West Bank settlement would make a Palestinian state impossible

The end of a future Palestinian state appears to be coming ever closer

The neighborhood of El Za'im, on the outskirts of east Jerusalem in the West Bank, near where Israeli government says housing units will be built as part of the E1 settlement project. Picture: Ohad Zwigenberg/AP

The Israeli government has approved a plan for construction of a massive new settlement bloc in the controversial E1 area in the occupied West Bank.

In reviving a project first proposed in 1994, which will comprise about 3,500 new dwellings in a line across the West Bank, finance minister Bezalel Smotrich laid bare the intentions of his government. He declared that “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”.