The recent recognition of Palestine by the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia has increased diplomatic pressure on Israel. Yet instead of making concessions, Netanyahu’s government is expanding settlements and advancing the E1 project—a vast development east of Jerusalem that would split the West Bank and prevent East Jerusalem from becoming the capital of a future Palestinian state.
Just as more Western countries unite in recognizing a Palestinian state, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is intensifying his efforts to block its creation.
The most direct means is the accelerated construction of Israeli settlements, which the overwhelming majority of the international community deems illegal. But some of his most radical ministers demand going further by formally annexing the West Bank, home to major cities such as Ramallah and Nablus.
On Sunday, the prime minister issued a stark warning to the United Kingdom, France, Canada, Australia, and other Western nations that joined the UN majority in supporting Palestinian statehood. “It will not happen. West of the Jordan, there will be no Palestinian state,” he declared.
It remains unclear how exactly Israel intends to respond to the latest wave of diplomatic pressure. Netanyahu avoids disclosing specific measures but promises a tough reaction.
“The response to yet another attempt to impose a terrorist state in the heart of our country will come after my return from the United States,” he said, referring to his trip to New York, where he is scheduled to address the UN General Assembly on Friday.
Israel’s likely response will be further expansion of the settlement network and tighter military control of the West Bank—steps that would fragment Palestinian territories into ever smaller enclaves.
Settlement Construction Makes Contiguous Borders for a Palestinian State Impossible
Minutes after British Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced recognition of a Palestinian state, the label “Occupied Palestinian Territories” on the Foreign Office’s regional map was replaced with a single word—“Palestine.”
Yet changing a cartographic label is not enough to bring into being a Palestinian state that would include the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem.
The real power to derail the project lies with Israel: accelerated settlement construction effectively makes it impossible to establish contiguous borders for a future state.
Israeli ultranationalists openly state that their goal is to incorporate all the lands mentioned in the Bible into Israel. “They will talk about the Palestinian dream, and we will continue building the Jewish reality,” far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich declared last month. “This reality will finally bury the idea of a Palestinian state, because there will be nothing to recognize and no one to recognize.”
Last Sunday, Netanyahu was even more explicit: “We have indeed doubled Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria and will continue on this path,” he said, using the biblical names for the West Bank favored by ultranationalists.
Just last month, EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas warned that the rapid expansion of settlements in the West Bank not only violates international law but also destroys the very possibility of realizing a two-state solution.
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The E1 Project in East Jerusalem Splits the Territory and Excludes Its Role as Palestine’s Future Capital
At the center of her concern is a contentious plan to build thousands of new housing units on the outskirts of East Jerusalem, within the occupied West Bank. Implementing this project would effectively cut the territory in two and make it impossible for East Jerusalem to serve as the capital of a future Palestinian state.
“If this plan goes forward, the construction will permanently sever the geographic and territorial link between occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank, as well as break the connection between its northern and southern parts,” Kallas stressed.
The large-scale construction project in the area technically known as E1, east of Jerusalem, has been championed for years by Israeli ultranationalists and settler leaders, including Bezalel Smotrich. Yet the plan had remained frozen for decades due to strong international opposition. In August, the project to build 20,000 housing units received final approval, after which Smotrich declared: “The Palestinian state is being erased from the table not with slogans, but with actions.”
Most peace initiatives have been based on the premise that Israeli and Palestinian states should be established along the borders that existed before the Six-Day War of 1967, with possible land swaps to resolve disputed issues. But such a formula has always been unacceptable to Netanyahu and Israel’s right-wing parties, which categorically reject the very idea of Palestinian statehood.
Beyond the project in East Jerusalem, Netanyahu’s center-right coalition is expanding the settlement network at an unprecedented pace: new neighborhoods are rapidly spreading and being entrenched through the construction of roads and other permanent infrastructure. From November 2023 to October 2024, 49 new Israeli outposts were established—a record figure in many years—bringing the total number of settlements in the West Bank to 141.
Dozens more are at various stages of preparation, intensifying a process that former Prime Minister and Netanyahu critic Ehud Olmert recently described as “creeping annexation.”
“This is the logical conclusion of the course Netanyahu has set,” he added.
The Far Right Pushes for Formal Annexation of the West Bank and Gaza, Undermining the Very Idea of Two States
According to Israel’s Channel 12, Gulf states are already rushing to warn Israel against annexing all or part of the West Bank in response to the growing wave of international recognition of Palestinian statehood. On Monday, UK Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper also cautioned Israel against further expansion into Palestinian lands, telling the BBC: “We have made it clear, and I personally conveyed this to Israel’s foreign minister: the government of Israel must not do this.”
But even without a formal act of annexation, it is hard to see how a two-state solution could be realized at the current pace of settlement construction. Nearly half a million Israeli settlers now live in the West Bank. Under such conditions, for any future Israeli government, the idea of repeating the step taken by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in 2005 looks politically unthinkable and extremely risky. At that time, Israel withdrew its troops from Gaza and dismantled 21 settlements housing about 8,000 Jews.
The move provoked a bitter internal split. Any attempt to relocate hundreds of thousands of ideologically committed settlers from the West Bank would almost certainly plunge Israel into an even deeper crisis.