Israel said Thursday it was moving forward with controversial plans to build thousands of new housing units in the occupied West Bank, a development far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said would “permanently bury the idea of a Palestinian state.

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and a woman hold a map that shows the long-frozen E1 settlement scheme, that would split East Jerusalem from the occupied West Bank, on the day of a press conference near the Israeli settlement of Maale Adumim,

Israel’s far-right finance minister says a contentious new settlement construction in the Israeli-occupied West Bank is going ahead, a project that Palestinians and rights groups worry will scuttle plans for a future Palestinian state by effectively cutting the West Bank into two separate parts.