The Israeli government will advance plans next week to build more than 3,000 housing units in the highly controversial E1 settlement project, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich announced Thursday.

The E1 project has been paused for decades due to international pressure, as its implementation could have significant consequences for Palestinian statehood aspirations. Smotrich said Thursday that the move “buries the idea of a Palestinian state and continues the many steps we are taking on the ground as part of the de facto sovereignty plan that we began implementing with the establishment of the government."

Smotrich, who is also a minister in the broader Defense Ministry, claimed that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “backs me up in everything concerning Judea and Samaria [the biblical name of the West Bank], and is letting me create the revolution."

What’s the E1 project? The E1 area, about 12 square kilometers, is located between the occupied West Bank settlement city Ma’ale Adumim and the east Jerusalem Palestinian neighborhood of Shuafat. Technically, it is part of the Ma’ale Adumim municipality, which has a population of 40,000. Currently, the area is undeveloped, but if houses are built there, the area would cut off the north of the West Bank from the south with a continuity of settlements and prevent the establishment of a contiguous and viable Palestinian state on the West Bank, which is already dotted with Jewish settlements.