The UN Security Council convened an emergency briefing on Israel's E1 settlement plan, a roughly 12,000-dunam project between Jerusalem and Ma'ale Adumim that experts say would sever the northern and southern West Bank and isolate East Jerusalem from Palestinian territory.
Israeli officials including Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich have described the settlement expansion explicitly as a means to prevent Palestinian territorial contiguity, rather than couching it as security infrastructure as in past decades.
Representatives from Pakistan, Palestine, the UK and France condemned the expansion at the session, with France and the UK reportedly open to targeted sanctions on settlers and companies tied to the construction; the US has not attached conditions to military assistance despite historically treating E1 construction as a red line.
The full dispatch is available from the source below.