Netanyahu signs E1 plan to bisect West Bank as Israeli forces raid its cities

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu signed off the highly controversial E1 plan allowing for a massive expansion of settlements in the occupied West Bank on Thursday, local media reported.

“We said that there would not be a Palestinian state - and indeed, there will not be a Palestinian state,” Netanyahu said at a ceremony in the Israeli settlement of Maale Adumim.

The E1 plan, a decades-old project approved by the Israeli Civil Administration last month, will permit the building of over 3,400 new settler units in an area that aims to connect existing settlements in Maale Adumim in the occupied West Bank with occupied East Jerusalem.

Read more: Netanyahu signs E1 plan to bisect West Bank as Israeli forces raid its cities