Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich previously approved plans for a settlement that would split east Jerusalem from the West Bank. The UN human rights office said on Friday that Israel's decision to build a new settlement near east Jerusalem was illegal under international law and that it put nearby Palestinians at risk of forced eviction,

Smotrich’s settlement plans come as the international spotlight on Israel intensifies, with growing calls for a cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war amid mass concerns over the ongoing malnutrition crisis in Gaza and backlash over Netanyahu’s plan to fully occupy the Gaza Strip.

Israel's far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich on Thursday said his country would annex the occupied West Bank if the international community officially recognizes the state of Palestine next month.

Israel’s far-right finance minister has announced the final approval of contentious new settlement construction in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, which Palestinians and rights groups worry will scutt

TEL AVIV, (Reuters) -Israeli far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich approved plans overnight for a settlement that would split East Jerusalem from the occupied West Bank, a move his office said would bury the idea of a Palestinian state.

Bezalel Smotrich, who is sanctioned by Australia and the UK, says a controversial new development "definitively buries the idea of a Palestinian state".

“He backs me up in everything concerning Judea and Samaria, and is letting me create the revolution,” Smotrich says in an address to an event in Maale Adumim organized by the Yesha Council, the umbrella organization representing local authorities in settlements.