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.

The planned settlement, which was shelved for years amid opposition from the United States and European allies, would comprise more than 3,400 homes for Israeli settlers on Palestinian-owned land that experts say is vital for any future territorially contigu

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