Israel’s government has granted final approval to a settlement project in the occupied West Bank that would effectively split Palestinian territory in two, sabotaging efforts at creating a future Palestinian state. The “E-1” settlement would see the construction of about 3,400 new housing units and would sever one of the few remaining territorial links between major Palestinian cities like Ramallah in the northern West Bank and southern cities including Bethlehem. Approval of the E-1 settlement quickly drew international outrage. The U.N. secretary-general condemned the plan as an “existential threat to the two-State solution,” while British Foreign Secretary David Lammy condemned it as “a flagrant breach of international law.”