The Portuguese Foreign Minister Paulo Rangel has called the Israeli settlement expansion plan E1 “extremely pernicious”.
– Following a meeting with the Palestinian Foreign Minister Varsen Aghabekian Shahin in Lisbon, Rangel said the Israeli plan would divide the occupied West Bank and isolate occupied East Jerusalem, and was incompatible with a two-state solution.
– Rangel said Israel’s economic pressure on the West Bank and East Jerusalem is undermining prospects for a viable Palestinian state.
– Israel’s withholding of Palestinian tax revenues amounted to a “brutal strangulation” of the Palestinian Authority’s finances, preventing the economy from functioning, Rangel added.
– Israel’s E1 plan, approved by the government in 2025, aims to build more than 3,400 housing units on roughly 12sq km (4.6sq miles) of Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank.
https://aje.news/jm4ix2?update=4950837