PA condemns Netanyahu promise to build settlement homes in West Bank’s E1 area

Israel’s plan to build new settler homes in an area of the West Bank would destroy the prospect of a two-state solution, Palestinian foreign minister Riyad al-Maliki said Wednesday.

The plan to build 3,500 new homes in an area known as E1 “is so dangerous, more dangerous than any other settlement plans in the West Bank,” al-Maliki tells reporters on the sidelines of the Human Rights Council in Geneva.

Al-Maliki says the plan “intends to destroy the two-state solution” and would “kill any possibility” for a peace plan proposed by US President Donald Trump and accepted by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last month.

Netanyahu made the pledge to build new settler homes on Tuesday in the latest in a string of promises to expand settlements as the right-wing premier faces both a tight general election and a corruption trial.

— AFP