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, reports Al Jazeera.
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."
Israel has long had ambitions to build on the roughly 12 square kilometre (five square mile) tract of land known as E1, but the plan had been stalled for years in the face of international opposition.
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, as 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.
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