'There will be no Palestinian state,' Israel's PM says as he signs West Bank settlement plan

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has signed an agreement to push ahead with a controversial settlement expansion plan that will cut across land that the Palestinians hope would form the basis of a future state.

"There will not be a Palestinian state," Netanyahu said during a visit to the Maale Adumim settlement in the West Bank on Thursday.

"This place belongs to us...We will safeguard our heritage, our land and our security. We are going to double the city’s population."

Israel's Higher Planning Committee gave final approval for the E1 settlement project in the occupied West Bank in August.

The plan, on an open tract of land east of Jerusalem, has been under consideration for more than two decades but was frozen due to US pressure during previous administrations.

The Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories is illegal under international law. Last year, the International Court of Justice declared in a landmark ruling that Israel should end settlement activity in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and end its occupation of those areas, as well as Gaza, as soon as possible.

Far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a former settler leader, cast the approval as a rebuke to Western countries that announced their plans to recognise a Palestinian state in recent weeks.

"The Palestinian state is being erased from the table not with slogans but with actions," he said.

"Every settlement, every neighbourhood, every housing unit is another nail in the coffin of this dangerous idea."

Several countries, including the UK and the Netherlands, have in recent weeks moved to sanction Smotrich, as well as National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir for inciting settler violence against Palestinians and calling for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza.

In a post on X, British Foreign Secretary David Lammy condemned the approval of the E1 project, calling it "a flagrant breach of international law".

Germany's Foreign Ministry spokesperson Josef Hinterseher also condemned the move during a news conference.

"The position of the federal government is clear: we strongly reject this approval. The settlement construction violates international law and relevant UN Security Council resolutions," he said.

The location of E1 is significant because it is one of the last geographical links between the major West Bank cities of Ramallah, in the north, and Bethlehem, in the south.

The two cities are 22 kilometres apart, but Palestinians traveling between them must take a wide detour and pass through multiple Israeli checkpoints, spending hours on the journey.

The hope was that, in an eventual Palestinian state, the region would serve as a direct link between the cities.

Israel’s expansion of settlements is part of an increasingly dire 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 attacks by settlers on Palestinians, evictions from Palestinian towns, Israeli military operations, and checkpoints that choke freedom of movement.