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. The announcement on Thursday comes as many countries said they would recognize a Palestinian state in September at the United Nations General Assembly. Israel's Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich says the "reality finally buries the idea of a Palestinian state, because there is nothing to recognize and no one to recognize.”
