Ministers in the Israeli government have in recent months pushed for more rapid development of these settlements, explicitly as a rebuke to claims of Palestinian sovereignty.

Israel’s far-right finance minister says a contentious new settlement construction in the Israeli-occupied West Bank is going ahead, a project that Palestinians and rights groups worry will scuttle plans for a future Palestinian state by effectively cutting the West Bank into two separate parts.

Tensions between Israeli settlers and Palestinians in the occupied West Bank continue to grow, amid plans from Israel's government to build thousands of new homes there.