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israeli settlements
With Reported Trump Backing, Israel to Approve Settlement Aimed at 'Burying' Potential for Palestinian State
The Palestinian foreign ministry called the E1 plan "an extension of crimes of genocide, displacement, and annexation."
Aug 14, 2025
One of Israel's biggest proponents of breaking international law by expanding settlements in the West Bank claimed Thursday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Trump administration have both given their approval for an expansion scheme that has been blocked for decades and that threatens the possibility of ever establishing a Palestinian state.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich held up a map showing a corridor known as E1, which would link Jerusalem to the settlement of Maale Adumim, at a press conference in the illegal settlement where he proclaimed that the proposal "buries the idea of a Palestinian state."
"This is Zionism at its best—building, settling, and strengthening our sovereignty in the Land of Israel," said Smotrich. "This reality finally buries the idea of a Palestinian state, because there is nothing to recognize and no one to recognize. Anyone in the world who tries today to recognize a Palestinian state will receive an answer from us on the ground."
The announcement followed recent statements from leaders in France, the United Kingdom, and Canada saying they were prepared to join the vast majority of United Nations member states in recognizing Palestinian statehood.
In a statement with the headline, "Burying the Idea of a Palestinian State," the finance minister said Israel plans to build 3,401 homes for Israeli settlers in the E1 corridor.
The plan still needs the approval of Israel's High Planning Council, which is expected next week. After the project is approved, settlers could begin housing construction in about a year.
The Israeli group Peace Now, an anti-settlement watchdog, said Thursday that "government is driving us forward at full speed" toward "an abyss."
"The Netanyahu government is exploiting every minute to deepen the annexation of the West Bank and prevent the possibility of a two-state solution," said Peace Now. "The government of Israel is condemning us to continued bloodshed, instead of working to end it."
Smotrich, whose popularity in Israel has plummeted in recent months, claimed U.S. President Donald Trump and Mike Huckabee, Trump's ambassador to Israel, reversed the United States' longstanding opposition to the E1 plan, which would cut off Palestinian communities between Jerusalem and the Jordan Valley, including an historic area called al-Bariyah.
The proposed settlement would also close to Palestinians the main highway going from Jerusalem to Maale Adumim.
"The Israeli government is openly announcing apartheid," Aviv Tatarsky, a researcher at the Israeli rights group Ir Amim, told Middle East Eye. "It explicitly states that the E1 plans were approved to 'bury' the two-state solution and to entrench de facto sovereignty. An immediate consequence could be the uprooting of more than a dozen Palestinian communities living in the E1 area."
Netanyahu and the Trump administration have not confirmed Smotrich's claim that they back the establishment of E1, but the White House has signaled a lack of support for the longstanding U.S. policy of working toward a two-state solution.
Huckabee said in a June interview with Bloomberg News that the U.S. is no longer seeking an independent Palestinian state.
"The Israeli government is openly announcing apartheid. It explicitly states that the E1 plans were approved to 'bury' the two-state solution and to entrench de facto sovereignty."
Smotrich said Thursday that Huckabee and Trump believe "a Palestinian state would endanger the existence of Israel" and that "God promised [the West Bank] to our father Abraham and gave [it] to us thousands of years ago."
He added, using the biblical term for the West Bank, that Netanyahu "backs me up in everything concerning Judea and Samaria, and is letting me create the revolution."
The U.S. State Department was vague in its response to questions from The Times of Israel about the E1 settlement on Thursday.
"A stable West Bank keeps Israel secure and is in line with the Trump administration's goal to achieve peace in the region," said the agency. "We refer you to the government of Israel for more information."
Countries including the U.K., New Zealand, Canada, and Australia imposed sanctions on Smotrich in June for inciting violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, the rate of which has doubled over the last year.
In a statement, the Palestinian foreign ministry called the new settlement plan "an extension of crimes of genocide, displacement, and annexation."
Tatarsky said Smotrich's announcement on Thursday showed how international supporters of Palestinian statehood must "understand that Israel is undeterred by diplomatic gestures or condemnations" and take "concrete action" to stop the expansion of illegal settlements.
Speaking to The Guardian Wednesday, Francesca Albanese, the U.N. special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, said countries that have recently signaled plans to recognize Palestinian statehood must also focus on ending Israel's assault and blockade in Gaza, which has killed more than 61,000 Palestinians so far—including at least 239 people who have starved to death.
“Of course it's important to recognize the state of Palestine," Albanese said. "It's incoherent that they've not done it already."
"Ending the question of Palestine in line with international law is possible and necessary," she added. "End the genocide today, end the permanent occupation this year, and end apartheid. This is what's going to guarantee freedom and equal rights for everyone."
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With the World's Eyes on Gaza, Israel Continues Its War on the West Bank
Every action Israel has undertaken, especially since the commencement of its devastating genocide in Gaza, has been carefully calculated to culminate in the irreversible annexation of the West Bank.
Jul 27, 2025
Israel is meticulously following a textbook model of instigating unrest in the occupied West Bank.
The latest such provocations consisted of stripping the Palestinian-run Hebron (Al-Khalil) municipality of its administrative powers over the venerable Ibrahimi Mosque. Worse, according to Israel Hayom, it granted these powers to the religious council of the Kiryat Arba Jewish settlement, an extremist settler body.
Though all Jewish settlers in occupied Palestine can be qualified as extremists, the approximately 7,500 inhabitants of Kiryat Arba represent a more virulent category. This settlement, established in 1972, serves as a strategic foothold to justify subjecting Hebron to stricter military control than virtually any other part of the West Bank.
Kiryat Arba is infamously linked to Baruch Goldstein, the U.S.-Israeli settler who, in February 1994, unleashed a horrific attack. He opened fire at Muslim worshipers kneeling for dawn prayer at the Ibrahimi Mosque, mercilessly killing 29. This bloodbath was swiftly followed by another, where the Israeli army brutally cracked down on Palestinian protesters in Hebron and across the West Bank, murdering an additional 25 Palestinians.
This level of systemic pressure and oppression will ultimately lead to a popular explosion.
Yet, the Israeli Shamgar Commission, tasked with investigating the massacre, resolved in 1994 that the Palestinian mosque, a site of profound religious significance, was to be grotesquely divided: 63% allocated to Jewish worshipers and a mere 37% to Palestinian Muslims.
Since that calamitous decision, oppressive restrictions have been systematically imposed. These include pervasive surveillance and, at times, unjustifiable, extended closures of the site, solely for exclusive settler use.
The latest decision, described by Israel Hayom as "historic and unprecedented," is profoundly dangerous. It places the fate of this historic Palestinian mosque directly into the hands of those fanatically keen on acquiring the holy site in its entirety.
But the Ibrahimi Mosque is merely a microcosm of something far more sinister underway across the West Bank. Israel has exploited its war in Gaza to dramatically escalate its violence, carry out mass arrests, confiscate vast tracts of land, systematically destroy Palestinian farms and orchards, and aggressively expand illegal settlements.
Though the West Bank, previously largely subdued by joint Israeli military pressures and Palestinian Authority crackdowns, was not a direct party to the October 7, 2023 assault nor the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza, it has inexplicably become a major focus for Israeli military measures.
In the first year of the war, over 10,400 Palestinians were detained in Israeli army crackdowns, with thousands held without charge. Furthermore, hundreds of Palestinians have been forcibly ethnically cleansed, largely from the northern West Bank, where entire refugee camps and towns have been systematically destroyed in protracted Israeli military campaigns.
Israel's overarching aim remains the strangulation of the West Bank. This is achieved by severing communities using ubiquitous military checkpoints, imposing total closures of vast regions, and the cruel suspension of work permits for Palestinian laborers, who are almost entirely dependent on the Israeli work market for survival.
This insidious plan also explicitly targeted all Palestinian holy sites, including the revered Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in occupied East Jerusalem, and the Ibrahimi Mosque. Even when these shrines were nominally accessible, age restrictions and suffocating military checkpoints make it difficult, at times utterly impossible, for Palestinians to worship there.
In August 2024, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asserted that his relentless, violent campaign against the West Bank was part of confronting the "broader Iran terror axis." Practically, this statement served as a green light for the Israeli army to treat the West Bank as an extension of the ongoing Israeli genocide on Gaza. By mid-July 2025, over 900 Palestinians had been killed by the Israeli army in the West Bank, while at least 15 were murdered by settlers.
As Palestinians were pushed further against the wall, with no centralized strategy by their leadership to meaningfully resist, Israel exponentially increased its illegal settlement constructions and the brazen legalization of numerous outposts, many built illegally even by Israeli government standards.
Israel's actions in the West Bank were not a sudden deviation but consistent with a long-standing, insidious scheme. This includes a plan solidified by the Israeli Knesset in 2020 that allowed Israel to officially annex the West Bank. Israel's ultimate goal has always been to confine the majority of Palestinians into Bantustan-like enclaves, while asserting full control over the vast majority of the region.
In August 2023, extremist National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir articulated this sinister vision: "My right, the right of my wife and my children to move around Judea and Samaria [the occupied West Bank] is more important than freedom of movement for the Arabs."
More coercive measures swiftly followed, including Knesset laws to significantly curtail the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East operations, and further legislation to entrench de facto annexation. Last May, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich audaciously announced 22 more settlements. On July 2, 14 Israeli ministers made a public call on Netanyahu to immediately annex the West Bank.
In fact, every action Israel has undertaken, especially since the commencement of its devastating genocide in Gaza, has been carefully calculated to culminate in the irreversible annexation of the West Bank—a process that would inevitably be followed by declaring native inhabitants persona non grata in their own homeland.
This level of systemic pressure and oppression will ultimately lead to a popular explosion. Though suppressed by the brutality of the Israeli army, the terror of armed settlers, and the suppressive actions of the Palestinian Authority, the breaking point is fast approaching.
Those in the West who preach hollow calls for calm and deescalation must understand the region is hurtling toward the brink. Neither diplomatic platitudes nor sterile press releases will suffice to avert the catastrophe. They are advised to act decisively against Israel's destructive policies, and they must act immediately.
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New Illegal Settlements Show Israel Is 'Blatantly Working to Destroy the Palestinian People'
"The international community is enabling Israel's crimes by standing aside while millions of Palestinians are subjected to this racist and brutal regime of the Israeli government," said the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem.
May 30, 2025
Israeli government officials confirmed Thursday that they have approved the largest expansion of unlawful settlements in the occupied West Bank in decades, including the construction of new settlements and the "legalization" under Israeli law of existing outposts in the Palestinian territory.
The decision, reportedly made during a secret Israeli security cabinet meeting last week, drew sharp backlash from Israeli human rights organizations. A spokesperson for B'Tselem said the latest expansion of settlements—which the International Court of Justice has condemned as part of an illegal annexation campaign—shows that "Israel continues to promote Jewish supremacy through the theft of Palestinian land and the ethnic cleansing of the West Bank."
"The Israeli government is openly and blatantly working to destroy the Palestinian people, and any chances for a normal future for the people living between the Jordan River and the sea," the spokesperson said. "The international community is enabling Israel's crimes by standing aside while millions of Palestinians are subjected to this racist and brutal regime of the Israeli government."
Israeli settlements in the West Bank have grown rapidly since the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023, with the United Nations Human Rights Office estimating that Israel moved ahead with plans to build more than 20,000 housing units in new or existing settlements between November 2023 and October 2024.
"This extremist Israeli government is trying by all means to prevent the establishment of an independent Palestinian state," Nabil Abu Rudeineh, a spokesperson for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, told Reuters on Thursday.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz confirmed that's the government's objective, declaring that settlement expansion "prevents the establishment of a Palestinian state that would endanger Israel."
"The Israeli government no longer pretends otherwise: The annexation of the occupied territories and expansion of settlements is its central goal."
The new expansion will add nearly two dozen settlements, according to far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who lives in a West Bank settlement and vocally supports annexation of the Palestinian territory.
"This is a great day for settlement and an important day for the state of Israel," Smotrich wrote in a social media post on Thursday.
The announcement came amid continued Israeli raids and home demolitions in the West Bank, alongside the Israeli military's devastating assault on the Gaza Strip. Israel's attacks have displaced tens of thousands of people in the West Bank and virtually the entire population of Gaza.
It's unclear where the new settlements will be located in the West Bank, given that the expansion decision was made in secret. The Israeli anti-occupation group Peace Now suggested that the secrecy could stem from "concerns about the proceedings in the International Criminal Court, which has begun investigating Israel's settlement construction and development as possible war crimes."
The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this week that the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court was considering arrest warrants against Smotrich and Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir for their roles in expanding West Bank settlements.
"The Israeli government no longer pretends otherwise: The annexation of the occupied territories and expansion of settlements is its central goal," Peace Now said in a statement Thursday. "The cabinet's decision to establish 22 new settlements—the most extensive move of its kind since the Oslo Accords, under which Israel committed not to establish new settlements—will dramatically reshape the West Bank and entrench the occupation even further."
"At a time when both the Israeli public and the entire world is demanding an immediate end to the war, the government is making clear—again and without restraint—that it prefers deepening the occupation and advancing de facto annexation over pursuing peace," the group added.
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