Category World News

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has officially moved forward with a settlement expansion plan in the occupied West Bank that would make any future Palestinian state virtually impossible.

The Israeli leader signed an agreement on Thursday to move ahead with the project, which would bisect the West Bank.

“We are going to fulfil our promise that there will be no Palestinian state. This place belongs to us,” Netanyahu said at the event in Maale Adumim, an Israeli settlement just east of Jerusalem.

“We are going to double the city’s population.”

The settlement, on a 12sq-km (4.6sq-mile) tract of land east of Jerusalem, is known as “East 1” or “E1”.

The development plan, which includes 3,400 new homes for Israeli settlers, would cut off much of the West Bank from occupied East Jerusalem while linking up thousands of Israeli settlements in the area.

East Jerusalem carries particular significance to Palestinians as their choice for the capital of a future Palestinian state.

All Israeli settlements in the West Bank, occupied since 1967, are considered illegal under international law, regardless of whether they have Israeli planning permission.

Reporting for Al Jazeera from Amman, Jordan, because Israel has banned Al Jazeera from the West Bank and Israel, Hamdah Salhut explained that this expansion is controversial because it destroys any territorial continuity from the West Bank to East Jerusalem, further dismantling any possibility that there could be a Palestinian state in the future.

Palestinian leaders push back

Palestinian Authority presidential spokesperson Nabil Abu Rudeineh on Thursday insisted that a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital is the key to peace in the region. He called it and the two-state solution “inevitable” despite Netanyahu’s move.

Rudeineh condemned Israeli settlements as illegal under international law and accused Netanyahu of “pushing the entire region towards the abyss”.

He noted that 149 United Nations member states have already recognised Palestine and called on all countries that have not yet done so to recognise a Palestinian state immediately.

How did we get here?

Netanyahu has long championed settlements in occupied Palestinian territory and fought any efforts towards peace between Israel and Palestine. He railed against the signing of the Oslo Accords, two agreements in the 1990s between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization that many hoped would lead to the creation of a Palestinian state.

“I de facto put an end to the Oslo Accords,” Netanyahu was caught on video boasting in 2001.

In 1997 during his first term as prime minister, Netanyahu helped establish the settlement of Har Homa in East Jerusalem, CNN reported. He added in an interview with the Israeli news site NRG that a Palestinian state would never be formed while he was in office.

More recently, far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said settlements such as E1 will help erase Palestine from the map, even as Palestinian statehood gains increasing recognition from UN member states.

“This reality finally buries the idea of a Palestinian state because there is nothing to recognise and no one to recognise,” Smotrich said.

The UN General Assembly demanded in September 2024 that Israel end its presence in the West Bank by withdrawing its military, immediately stopping work on new settlements and evacuating settlers from occupied land.

More than 100 nations voted for the resolution. Fourteen voted against.

The vote followed an advisory opinion issued by the International Court of Justice in July 2024 that said Israel’s continued presence in occupied territory was unlawful and Israel was “under an obligation to cease immediately all new settlement activities and to evacuate all settlers from the occupied Palestinian Territory”.

Netanyahu called the opinion a “decision of lies”.

More recently, 21 countries, including the United Kingdom, Australia and Japan, condemned Israel’s plan to build its new settlement.

Germany announced on Thursday that it will back a France-led proposal for a two-state solution, the Bloomberg news agency reported. Berlin is planning to support a UN resolution this week to adopt the New York Declaration, led by France and Saudi Arabia and calling for the creation of a Palestinian state and a right to return for refugees.

Belgium, France and Malta have pledged to recognise a Palestinian state at the UN General Assembly session this month. Other countries, including Australia, Canada and the UK, have announced conditional recognitions, but it has remained unclear whether they will do so at the gathering.

The situation in the West Bank and Gaza

The settlement expansion news comes amid escalating violence.

On Monday, six people were killed in a shooting attack in Jerusalem when two Palestinian gunmen attacked a bus stop at the Ramot Junction. Several others were wounded.

Israeli forces responded by storming towns and demolishing the homes of the Palestinian suspects in the West Bank.

Al Jazeera reported on Thursday that nearly 100 men were arrested in Tulkarem in the West Bank. The arrests came after an attack that “lightly wounded two soldiers,” Haaretz reported, quoting the Israeli army.

Washington, DC – Mere minutes after news broke out that American right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk was shot, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shared a social media post expressing his sympathy.

As Kirk was declared dead on Wednesday, Netanyahu and other Israeli officials rushed to eulogise the 31-year-old activist and emphasise his support for Israel.

“A lion-hearted friend of Israel, he fought the lies and stood tall for Judeo-Christian civilization,” the Israeli prime minister wrote on X. “I spoke to him only two weeks ago and invited him to Israel. Sadly, that visit will not take place.”

That push, to portray Kirk as a fallen champion of Israel as much as of the US conservative movement, comes as many influential right-wing commentators have been increasingly critical of Washington’s unconditional support for its Middle East ally.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar called Kirk an “incredible friend” of Israel.

“Charlie represented the Judeo-Christian values that unite Israel and America,” he said in a social media post. “Above all, he was a fearless warrior for truth and freedom. He was murdered for that.”

No suspect has been detained for the killing of Kirk, a close ally of United States President Donald Trump, and the motives behind the killing remain unclear.

Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir paid tribute to Kirk on Wednesday, sharing a photo of the right-wing activist with an Israeli flag outside the Ibrahimi Mosque, one of Islam’s holiest sites, in the occupied West Bank.

“The collusion between the global Left and radical Islam is the greatest danger to humanity today,” Ben-Gvir said.

“Charlie Kirk saw the danger and warned about it. But the bullets of the despicable murderer struck him.”

In some of his final public appearances, Kirk – who regularly bashed Islam and Muslims – promoted the unfounded conspiracy theory that Islam and the political left are working together to undermine the US and Europe.

“Islam is the sword the left is using to slit the throat of America,” he wrote in a social media post on Tuesday, a day before he was shot.

Several Israeli politicians underscored Kirk’s ties to Israel while lauding his views.

For example, former Israeli Defence Minister Benny Gantz described Kirk as a “voracious defender of Judeo-Christian values, America & the State of Israel”.

The term “Judeo-Christian values” appeals to mainstream US conservatives, but critics say it aims to exclude Muslims and other religious groups from Western societies.

They also argue that it is ahistorical, given the hostility and anti-Semitism Jewish communities have faced in Christian societies in Europe over the past centuries.

But “Judeo-Christian values” were a recurring theme in the Israeli eulogies for Kirk.

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich joined other Israeli officials in calling Kirk a “true friend of Israel”.

The murder of Charlie Kirk is a tragic and devastating blow.

Charlie was a true friend of Israel, but beyond that, he was a man who engaged in genuine dialogue with his opponents as a way to promote his values.

A dialogue in which he defended the morals and principles he… pic.twitter.com/Ta4wncQr9G

Kirk’s Israel views

Kirk was indeed a staunch supporter of Israel – but not without occasional misgivings.

Last month, he denied the well-documented Israeli-imposed starvation in Gaza, echoing Israeli officials’ falsehoods that the United Nations-declared famine in the territory is “pure visual warfare”.

Still, despite his years of pro-Israel advocacy, he was not immune to the ideas of the growing “America First” movement that has been questioning the benefits of Washington’s devotion to its Middle East ally.

As Israeli leaders lobbied Trump to bomb Iran in June, Kirk warned that the US president’s “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) base was opposed to the war.

“I can tell you right now, our MAGA base does not want a war at all whatsoever,” Kirk said on his podcast. “They do not want US involvement. They do not want the United States to be engaged in this.”

Kirk supported Trump’s crackdown on Palestinian rights campus advocacy, including efforts to deport Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil, which activists say violated free speech rights.

However, he sometimes spoke out against overreaches by pro-Israel advocates to censor the country’s opponents.

In May, he voiced opposition to a proposed law to penalise boycotting Israel.

“In America you are allowed to hold differing views. You are allowed to disagree and protest,” Kirk wrote on X at that time.

“We’ve allowed far too many people who hate America move here from abroad, but the right to speak freely is the birthright of all Americans.”

In July, he hosted a panel of young conservatives sceptical of the US-Israel alliance and appeared to express frustration with accusations of anti-Semitism against any criticism of Israel.

Israel’s latest forced displacement order for Gaza City is one too many for Nahd al-Rafati. He is refusing to leave, weary of what seems like a never-ending cycle of expulsion.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu signed an agreement on Thursday to expand the illegal Maale Adumim settlement in the occupied West Bank. He said Israel would never allow a Palestinian state, framing the move as safeguarding “security and heritage”.

Washington ‘shielding Netanyahu government’ as it commits genocide in Gaza.