The United Kingdom told the U.N. Security Council on Oct. 15 that violence and settlement activity in the West Bank are worsening prospects for peace, with the two-state solution under serious threat.
Ambassador Sarah MacIntosh, the UK's permanent representative to the United Nations, urged Israel to abandon the tender for the E1 project and stop expanding settlements. She also linked the prospect of a Palestinian state to Gaza's recovery and steps to bring Gaza and the West Bank under Palestinian Authority governance.
The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) counted 51 settler attacks in the West Bank from Sept. 15-21. Its Sept. 25 report said the incidents involved Palestinian casualties, property damage or both. It also recorded damage, uprooting or burning of at least 800 olive, fruit and palm trees across five governorates.
OCHA's 2026 Flash Appeal said advancing E1 could leave East Jerusalem cut off from the rest of the West Bank and make travel between the territory's northern and southern areas harder. The plan also puts 18 Palestinian Bedouin communities, home to about 4,000 people, at risk of forced displacement, the appeal said.
The appeal also pointed to changes in governance powers and land registration, along with retroactive recognition of outposts, as developments that it said deepen annexation and dispossession. Separately, U.N. Security Council Resolution 2803 endorsed a Gaza plan that envisages the Palestinian Authority taking back control after completing reforms and becoming able to govern securely and effectively. It links redevelopment progress separately to a possible path toward Palestinian statehood.
MacIntosh argued that delaying Palestinian elections would deprive people of a timely choice of representatives and further weaken confidence in democratic institutions. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Oct. 10 decree scheduled presidential and legislative elections together for Sept. 11, 2027. It replaced the previous legislative election date of Nov. 28, 2026.
