Hello there and welcome to News Out from the BBC World Service coming to you live from London with me,
Sean Lay.
The United Nations has urged Israel to reverse today's announcement by the Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich of a project to construct a new Jewish settlement which would divide the occupied West Bank from East Jerusalem.
Mr Smotrich, who leads a small party on the right,
but one which is critical to the survival of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's coalition government,
said one result of building on the land would be to bury the prospects for a Palestinian state.
On that, if nothing else, the UN agrees with him.
It would put an end to prospects of a two-state solution, its spokesman said.
Earlier,
Mr Smotrich announced that construction would go ahead with a news conference in sweltering heat in Mal Ale Adumim,
an existing settlement next to the land which it's proposed to build on.
Anyone who is trying to recognise a Palestinian state today will receive our answer on the ground.
Not with documents, nor with decisions or statements, but with facts.
Facts of houses, facts of neighbourhoods, roads and of more and more Jewish families building lives.
They will speak of the false Palestinian dream.
We will continue to build a fulfilling Jewish reality.
This reality definitively buries the idea of a Palestinian state simply
because there is nothing to recognise and no one to recognise.
Five-ounce minister Bezalel Smotrich,
while our correspondent John Donison was at his news conference.