LONDON (dpa-AFX) - The UK Government has summoned Israel's Chargé d'Affaires to lodge protest against the Israeli Government's launch of a tender for a major settlement project in the E1 area of the occupied West Bank.
Daniela Grudsky Ekstein, who leads Israel's diplomatic mission in London, was summoned on Wednesday to the Foreign Office, which demanded an immediate reversal of the move by the Netanyahu government.
Also on Wednesday, Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband called his Israeli counterpart Gideon Saar and made clear that the Israeli Government must halt E1 settlement plans immediately, retract the tender and stop all settlement expansion.
He said the Israeli Government's publication of a tender for the E1 settlement project is an unacceptable and destructive act.
He explained that E1 would cut across the heart of Palestine and risks separating the West Bank from East Jerusalem, which would endanger the viability of a two-state solution.
'The UK has been clear privately and publicly in our opposition to E1 and our support for a two-state solution as the only way to ensure long-term security and peace for both Palestinians and Israelis. All settlements damage that prospect and are a flagrant breach of international law,' he added.
Miliband warned that in the coming weeks, the UK Government will set out a comprehensive set of measures to respond to Israeli government's policies, and target sanctions at those who participate in illegal settlement expansion.
the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, where we set out the UK's profound objection to this move by the Netanyahu government and demanded an immediate reversal.
Reports of new illegal Israeli outposts in the occupied West Bank raised alarms at UN Headquarters on Wednesday while the UN rights office called on Israel to condemn its national security minister's words that incite 'violence amounting to atrocity crimes' against Palestinians.
'The Secretary-General is deeply alarmed by the reports of new illegal Israeli settlement outposts in the occupied West Bank, including new tenders, including for the E1 area,' UN Spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said on Wednesday.
The controversial E1 settlement plan approved last year includes a tender for more than 1,200 new housing units issued by the Israeli Government this week.
It would effectively sever the connection between occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank and bisect north and south, triggering severe consequences for the territorial integrity of the Occupied Palestinian Territory and present an existential threat to the two-State solution.
Meanwhile, roughly 40,000 people, including children, are currently under curfew and not permitted to leave their homes in Dahiriya in Hebron after Israeli forces launched an operation on Wednesday, UN reported.
On the other side of the Palestinian territory, near daily deadly Israeli attacks, gunfire, missile launches and airstrikes continue in Gaza despite the October 2025 provisional ceasefire plan that ended the two-year Israel-Hamas war.
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