Israel announces a settlement project that critics say will effectively cut the West Bank in two

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MAALE ADUMIM, West Bank (AP) — Israel’s far-right finance minister said Thursday that a contentious new settlement construction in the Israeli-occupied West Bank is going ahead — a project that Palestinians and rights groups worry will scuttle plans for a Palestinian state by effectively cutting the territory into two parts.

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich boasted that the construction, which is expected to get final approval later this month could thwart Palestinian statehood plans.

His announcement came as many countries, including Australia, Britain, France, and Canada say they will recognize a Palestinian state in September, at the United Nations General Assembly.

The construction on a tract of land east of Jerusalem named E1 has been under consideration for more than two decades, and is especially controversial because it is one of the last geographic links between the major West Bank cities of Ramallah and Bethlehem.

The two cities are 22 kilometers (14 miles) apart by air. But once the E1 settlement project is completed, it will destroy the possibility of a direct route and will force Palestinians traveling between cities to continue taking a wide detour several kilometers (miles) out of their way, passing through multiple checkpoints, a process that adds hours to the journey.

“This reality finally buries the idea of a Palestinian state, because there is nothing to recognize and no one to recognize,” Smotrich said during a ceremony on Thursday. “Anyone in the world who tries today to recognize a Palestinian state — will receive an answer from us on the ground.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not publicly comment on the plan on Thursday, but he has touted it in the past.

Development in E1 was long frozen, largely due to U.S. pressure during previous administrations. On Thursday, Smotrich praised President Donald Trump and U.S. ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee as “true friends of Israel as we have never had before.”

The E1 plan is expected to receive final approval on Aug. 20, capping off 20 years of bureaucratic wrangling. The planning committee on Aug. 6 rejected all of the petitions to stop the construction filed by rights groups and activists, according to Peace Now, which tracks settlement expansion in the West Bank and filed opposition.

While some bureaucratic steps remain, if the process moves quickly, infrastructure work could begin in the next few months and construction of homes could start in around a year.

The approval is a “colonial, expansionist, and racist move,” Ahmed Al-Deek, the political adviser to the minister of Palestinian Foreign Affairs, told The Associated Press on Thursday.

“It falls within the framework of the extremist Israeli government’s plans to undermine any possibility of establishing a Palestinian state on the ground, to fragment the West Bank, and to separate its southern part from the center and the north,” Al-Deek said.

Rights groups also swiftly condemned the plan. Peace Now called it “deadly for the future of Israel and for any chance of achieving a peaceful two-state solution” which is “guaranteeing many more years of bloodshed.”

The Palestinian Authority and Arab countries have condemned Netanyahu’s statement in an interview on Tuesday that he was “very” attached to the vision of a Greater Israel. The prime minister did not elaborate, but some supporters of the idea believe that Israel should control the occupied West Bank and Gaza. Others believe this harks back to the biblical borders of Israel, which also include parts of other Arab countries, such as modern-day Jordan and Lebanon.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres also condemned the announcement and reiterated U.N. calls on the Israeli government to halt all settlement activity, U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.

The settlements violate international law, "further entrench the occupation, fuel tensions, and systematically erode the viability of a Palestinian state as part of a two-state solution,” Dujarric said.

If the E1 area construction goes ahead, it will cut the West Bank in two and severely undermine the "prospects for the realization of a viable, contiguous Palestinian state,” he added.

Israel's plans to expand settlements are part of an increasingly difficult reality for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank as the world’s attention focuses on the war in Gaza. There have been marked increases in settler attacks against Palestinians, evictions from Palestinian towns and checkpoints that choke freedom of movement, as well as several Palestinian attacks on Israelis.

More than 700,000 Israelis now live in the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem, territories captured by Israel in 1967 and sought by the Palestinians for a future state. The international community overwhelmingly considers Israeli settlement construction in these areas to be illegal and an obstacle to peace.

Israel’s government is dominated by religious and ultranationalist politicians with close ties to the settlement movement. Smotrich, previously a firebrand settler leader and now finance minister, has been granted Cabinet-level authority over settlement policies and vowed to double the settler population in the West Bank.

Israel captured the West Bank, east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip in the 1967 Mideast war. The Palestinians claim all three territories for a future independent state.

Israel has annexed east Jerusalem and claims it as part of its capital, which is not internationally recognized. It says the West Bank is disputed territory whose fate should be determined through negotiations, while Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005.

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Associated Press writer Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations contributed to this report.