• Geopolitics
• Human Rights

August 14, 2025, 5:48 PM View Comments ()

Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at growing Israeli settlements in the West Bank, the upcoming Trump-Putin summit in Alaska, and a U.S. crackdown on Mexico’s cartels.

Burying Palestinian Statehood Dreams

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich announced on Wednesday that he intends to approve the construction of more than 3,000 housing units in the occupied West Bank as part of the controversial E1 settlement project. The plan would sever one of the last geographic links between the major West Bank cities of Ramallah and Bethlehem, as well as split the West Bank from East Jerusalem—a move that Smotrich hopes will extinguish a renewed diplomatic push to secure a two-state solution and establish a viable Palestinian state.

“They will talk about a Palestinian dream, and we will continue to build a Jewish reality,” Smotrich said on Thursday in a speech at the site of the planned settlement. “This reality is what will permanently bury the idea of a Palestinian state, because there is nothing to recognize and no one to recognize.” Australia, Canada, France, and the United Kingdom have all recently announced that they plan to recognize an independent Palestinian state at the United Nations General Assembly in September, largely in response to Israel’s war in Gaza and the territory’s devastating humanitarian crisis. “Today, anyone in the world who tries to recognize a Palestinian state will receive an answer from us on the ground,” Smotrich said.

For years, foreign pressure against the E1 plan, including by the United States, stalled its construction. But U.S. President Donald Trump’s more lax policies toward Israeli settlements in the West Bank have reversed decades of condemnation. Trump and Mike Huckabee, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, are “true friends of Israel as we have never had before,” Smotrich said.

“A stable West Bank keeps Israel secure and is in line with this administration’s goal to achieve peace in the region,” a U.S. State Department spokesperson said when asked about Smotrich’s remarks. The spokesperson referred reporters to Israel’s government for further information and added that Washington remains primarily focused on ending the war in Gaza.

Final approval for E1 is expected to pass on Aug. 20, with infrastructure work beginning in the next few months and home construction starting in roughly a year. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has not issued a comment over the policy’s initial passage.

E1’s approval is a “colonial, expansionist, and racist move,” Ahmed al-Deek, a political advisor to the minister of Palestinian foreign affairs, told The Associated Press. “It falls within the framework of the extremist Israeli government’s plans to undermine any possibility of establishing a Palestinian state on the ground, to fragment the West Bank, and to separate its southern part from the center and the north.”

Israeli settlements in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem are considered to be violations of international law, the International Court of Justice ruled last July, adding that this form of occupation has “given rise to violence by settlers and security forces against Palestinians.” From January through June of this year, Israeli settlers have carried out more than 750 attacks on Palestinians and their property, according to the U.N. human rights office. This averages out to nearly 130 assaults per month—a record high since the U.N. began compiling such reports in 2006.

Several countries have issued sanctions against Smotrich and another far-right Israeli official, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, for promoting settlement construction and inciting settler violence. In June, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Norway, and the U.K. imposed a travel ban on Smotrich and Ben-Gvir and froze their assets. And on Thursday, British Foreign Secretary David Lammy demanded that the E1 plan be stopped immediately.

It is unclear if Smotrich could face further repercussions over the latest E1 deal. “The E1 plan is deadly for the future of Israel and for any chance of achieving a peaceful two-state solution,” Israeli advocacy group Peace Now said in a statement. “We are standing at the edge of an abyss, and the government is driving us forward at full speed.”

Today’s Most Read

• The Next Israel-Iran War Is Coming by Trita Parsi
• The Risks of the Trump-Putin Summit by John Haltiwanger
• The Battle Inside Russia’s Elite by Kirill Shamiev

What We’re Following

An optimistic outlook. Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday praised Trump’s “quite energetic and sincere efforts to stop the hostilities” and to “reach agreements that are of interest to all parties involved”—just one day before the two are due to meet at a U.S. military base in Alaska to discuss the war in Ukraine.

Putin expressed optimism about Friday’s summit, suggesting that “long-term conditions of peace between our countries, and in Europe, and in the world as a whole” could be reached. Russian foreign-policy aide Yuri Ushakov also suggested on Thursday that Putin and Trump would discuss the “untapped potential” of U.S.-Russia economic and trade relations.

At the same time, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has sought assurances from his European allies that Kyiv would not be sidelined from future negotiations. On Thursday, Zelensky met with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer to continue discussing the security guarantees needed to ensure long-term European defense.

Cracking down on cartels. The U.S. Treasury Department on Wednesday imposed sanctions on 13 Mexican companies and four individuals accused of working with the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, which Washington designated a foreign terrorist organization in February. The cartel associates are believed to have executed a yearslong, multimillion-dollar fraud scheme aimed at older adults purchasing timeshares.

The announcement came just one day after Mexico City sent 26 high-ranking cartel figures, including suspected drug lord Abigael González Valencia, to the United States. Mexico made a similar transfer of 29 individuals in February.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has sought greater cooperation with the Trump administration to address the White House’s immigration and drug trafficking concerns as well as to ease tariff threats. Still, though, Mexico maintains that U.S. military strikes against Mexican cartels are “off the table.” And the White House appears unimpressed with Mexico’s latest efforts to counter violence on its side of the border. On Tuesday, Washington issued a new travel advisory for Mexico, warning travelers to “exercise increased caution in Mexico due to terrorism, crime, and kidnapping.” This is the first time that the United States has issued such a warning on its southern neighbor.

Blocked calls. Meta accused Moscow on Wednesday of restricting calls on WhatsApp and blocking more than 100 million Russians from accessing secure communications. The Kremlin confirmed partial restrictions on WhatsApp and Telegram, another foreign-owned platform. However, it claims that these apps have failed to share information related to fraud and terrorism cases with Russian law enforcement. Text messaging and voice notes have not been affected.

Russia’s long-simmering feud with foreign messaging services reached new heights after the country launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Over the past three years, the Kremlin has blocked websites and platforms, including Facebook and Instagram, for refusing to comply with its restrictive free speech laws.

“We’re deeply concerned that blocking WhatsApp aims to take away the right to private and secure communication and push people in Russia onto less secure services to enable government surveillance,” WhatsApp said in a statement. Such services include Max, a new state-controlled messaging app that digital rights activists fear could be used to track users’ activity.

Odds and Ends

British politicians are no strangers to scandal, which may be why Foreign Secretary David Lammy is trying to get ahead of the curve. On Wednesday, Lammy referred himself to the U.K.’s Environment Agency for fishing without a rod license when he and U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance went fishing in the English countryside last week. “As soon as the foreign secretary was made aware of the administrative error, he successfully purchased the relevant rod fishing licenses,” a government spokesperson said. Such an offense could force Lammy to pay a $3,400 fine.