Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared on Thursday evening that “there will be no Palestinian state,” as he signed an agreement to push ahead with the controversial E1 settlement expansion plan that will cut across West Bank land Palestinians seek for a state.

“We are going to fulfill our promise that there will be no Palestinian state; this place belongs to us,” Netanyahu said during a visit to the Ma’ale Adumim settlement in the West Bank, on the outskirts of Jerusalem, where thousands of new housing units would be added.

“We will safeguard our heritage, our land and our security… We are going to double the city’s population,” he added.

Netanyahu said that the project is about “realizing a vision… something very big is happening here.”

Last month, the E1 project, which would bisect the West Bank and cut it off from East Jerusalem, received final planning approval. Thursday’s signing ceremony was largely symbolic, but it allowed authorities to move forward with construction.

The Civil Administration of the Defense Ministry approved the plans, which would see 3,412 housing units built in a new neighborhood of Maale Adumim on the western side of the city, just east of East Jerusalem. Total investment in the project, which will include adding roads and upgrading major infrastructure, is estimated at nearly $1 billion.

Advocates of a two-state solution have argued for decades that the E1 project would in effect divide the West Bank in two for its Palestinian population, sever Palestinian East Jerusalem from the West Bank, and severely harm the future viability of a Palestinian state — something celebrated by the government’s ministers.

Israel has long had ambitions to build on the roughly 12 square kilometer tract of land known as E1, but the plan had been stalled for years in the face of international opposition.

Speaking at Thursday’s ceremony, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich averred that Israel will soon celebrate the annexation of the West Bank.

“The prime minister told me, ‘I’m staying here to hear what you have to say, and I know what you intend to say,'” said Smotrich. “Prime minister, all of us, soon, will thank you and congratulate and celebrate together the application of sovereignty throughout Judea and Samaria,” he added, using the biblical name for the West Bank.

A number of right-wing ministers have called in recent weeks for the annexation of parts or all of the West Bank as a response to several Western governments, including the UK and France, announcing that they intend to recognize the State of Palestine at the United Nations later this month.

Israeli NGO Peace Now, which monitors settlement activity in the West Bank, said last week that infrastructure work in E1 could begin within a few months, and housing construction within about a year.

It said the E1 plan was “deadly for the future of Israel and for any chance of achieving a peaceful two-state solution.”

The West Bank is home to around three million Palestinians, as well as about 500,000 Israeli settlers.

Sam Sokol contributed to this report.