Israel’s announcement that it will illegally build thousands of homes in a highly controversial development in the occupied West Bank – in a move Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich boasted “buries the idea of a Palestinian state” – has drawn widespread international condemnation.
Smotrich announced Thursday that he was pushing ahead with long-frozen plans for the E1 area settlement project that would connect occupied East Jerusalem with the existing illegal Israeli settlement of Maale Adumim, located several kilometres to the east.
