Energy Minister Eli Cohen said on Tuesday that measures adopted by the government that deepen Israeli control over the West Bank amount to implementing “de facto sovereignty.”

The steps “actually establish a fact on the ground that there will not be a Palestinian state,” Cohen, a member of the ruling Likud party, told Army Radio.

Cohen’s comments followed similar remarks by other members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, including Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and Defense Minister Israel Katz, who announced the measures.

The Palestinian Authority, Hamas, a group of Arab and Muslim countries, the European Union, and the United Nations have all condemned the measures. The US, meanwhile, issued a statement reiterating its opposition to Israel annexing the West Bank but not mentioning the new measures directly.

Last year, Trump said he wouldn’t allow Israel to annex the West Bank. The US-brokered ceasefire between Israel and Hamas that halted the war in Gaza also acknowledged Palestinian aspirations for statehood, though it did not lay out a pathway to that end.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is currently on his way to Washington to meet with Trump tomorrow,........

© The Times of Israel