After years on hold, Israel revives settlement project that will split the West Bank in two

Israel is reviving a settlement plan that would annex a strategic tract of land east of Jerusalem and build 3,400 new housing units on top of it. Known as the E1 settlement project, the plan would effectively split the West Bank in two and “bury” any prospects of a Palestinian state, according to far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich in a statement last week. 

“This is Zionism at its best — building, settling, and strengthening our sovereignty in the Land of Israel,” Smotrich stated. 

The settlement plan, which dates back to the 1990s, aims to connect Jerusalem to the existing illegal Israeli settlement of Maale Adumim located east of the city. The over 3,400 new planned housing units are set to be built over an area exceeding 12 square kilometres, known on Israeli maps as E-1, which stands for “East-1.”

Smotrich’s announcement was widely welcomed by the Israeli settlement community, with the Chairman of the Yesha Council settler organization, Israel Gantz, praising the plan as “another great and historical achievement for the settlement on the eve of the application of sovereignty.”

Ma’ale Adumim’s mayor, Guy Yifrach, said the project would thwart the Palestinians’ goal of pursuing what he described as “illegal construction” in the E1 area.

The E1 area straddles a strategic tract of land east of Jerusalem that separates the northern West Bank from its southern half. The E1 settlement plan would block any territorial contiguity between those two halves and effectively split the territory into two. Palestinian transportation between north and south would be rerouted to a planned network of tunnels set to pass underneath E1, effectively banning any Palestinian presence aboveground in the area.

Frozen attempts to implement the E1 plan

The E1 settlement plan has been on the Israeli agenda for over 20 years, shifting between freezes and renewed attempts to implement it.

The first attempts took place in the early 1990s under then-Prime Minister Yitzak Shamir and then-Defense Minister Moshe Arens. The Shamir government signed a document transferring part of the area to Maale Adumim’s Local Council.

A few years later, in 1994, the Settlement Subcommittee of the Supreme Planning Council in the Occupied West Bank issued a new plan that expanded the scope of the previous “master plan.”

Then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin ordered the Minister of Housing, Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, to begin planning a neighborhood to be located in E1, which was declared as state land set to be annexed to Maale Adumim. But implementation of the order was postponed due to strong international and Palestinian opposition. 

In the early 2000s, the Israeli Civil Administration settlement subcommittee approved two plans to establish residential neighborhoods that would connect Jerusalem with Ma’ale Adumim. All the plans called for 3,500 housing units to be built over the Green Line. But amid strong U.S. and European criticism, the project was once more put on hold.

According to the Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission report, In 2012, the Israeli occupation government approved the colonial E1 plan, which includes the seizure of 1,350 dunams (135 hectares) of Palestinian land to establish an industrial zone northwest of the E1 area; 180 dunams (18 hectares) for a police headquarters; and 500 dunams (50 hectares) from the lands of the Palestinian towns of Anata and Shu’fat for a landfill, which was intended to later be converted into a public park. 

The plan also called for three construction schemes and the “Fabric of Life” project, parts of which were built near the apartheid wall between the Palestinian towns of Anata and al-Za’ayem. But facing U.S. and EU pressure, Israel froze the project.

Despite earlier attempts, no actual progress had been made in adopting the residential plans approved by the Civil Administration. Instead, Israel has focused on implementing infrastructure projects like building bypass roads to connect settlements with Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. 

But this started to change earlier this year with the approval of the “Fabric of Life” project. This project is part of the larger planned network of underground tunnels that is estimated to cost $90 million, pirated from customs clearing funds earmarked for the Palestinian Authority, which Israel collects on its behalf per the Oslo Accords. Now, Smotrich’s latest announcement, scheduled for discussion by the Supreme Planning Council next week, could clear the way for the full implementation of the E1 plan.

Green light from the U.S.

Historically, U.S. administrations have opposed the E1 plan, describing it as a “red line” that would destroy the “two-state solution” framework. But Smotrich’s revival of the plan comes at a moment of unprecedented alignment between Washington and Tel Aviv.

At the press conference, Smotrich praised U.S. President Donald Trump and Ambassador Mike Huckabee, calling them “men of truth”. However, the U.S. State Department’s response to the issue was vague. When asked about its position on the plan, it simply stated, “A stable West Bank keeps Israel secure and is in line with the Trump administration’s goal to achieve peace in the region.”

“We have a U.S. administration fully aligned with the occupation,” Ameer Dawoud, a representative of the Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission, told Mondoweiss. Commenting on the vague U.S. statement, Dawoud stated that the U.S. is protecting Israel and “providing political cover to achieve its goals, which it has not accomplished in decades.”

Regional and international leaders have warned that the E1 plan would mark a definitive end to the so-called “two-state solution.” Foreign ministers of 31 Arab and Islamic countries recently issued a joint statement condemning Netanyahu’s talk of a “Greater Israel,” describing it as “a blatant and dangerous violation of international law.”

Another cornerstone in the annexation Plan 

For Palestinians and much of the international community, the E1 settlement plan is not just another construction project; it is the second cornerstone — after the apartheid Wall — in Israel’s wider annexation strategy in the West Bank.

Jamal Jumaa, the coordinator for Stop The Wall, told Mondoweiss that the annexation will create the most dangerous lateral cut in the heart of the West Bank, separating its north from its center and the south while isolating Jerusalem from its Palestinian surroundings. At the same time, it would expand East Jerusalem’s boundaries, reinforcing the Israeli narrative of a “United Jerusalem” under the sovereignty of the Israeli state.

Jumaa added that implementing the project would also close two key roads of historical and geographical significance to Palestinians. The first is the Jerusalem-Jericho road, a vital corridor connecting the north and south of the West Bank that passes through Jerusalem, and the second is what is known as the “Abu George” route, a road steeped in Jerusalem’s history and long regarded as a bridge connecting Palestine to the East.

Alongside Israel’s annexation plans, the Ma’ale Adumim council is seeking to attract settlers and tourists to the area through the construction of a national park, hotels, and sports facilities. The council is also developing an industrial zone aimed at drawing businesses and entrepreneurs. All of these projects, of course, would be inaccessible to Palestinians.

E1 and the expulsion of Palestinian Bedouin communities 

Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem estimates that the E1 area contains enclaves of privately owned Palestinian land totaling about 77.5 hectares. To implement the E1 project, Palestinians living around Ma’ale Adumim would be displaced once again, after having already been expelled from their original homes in Tel Arad in the Naqab Desert.

For decades, the Israeli occupation has sought to remove some 46 Bedouin communities from the eastern slopes and valleys overlooking the Jordan Valley, aiming to erase the Palestinian presence along historic Palestine’s eastern borders. This targeted area spans roughly one million dunams (100,000 hectares), according to the Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission. Since October 2023, Israeli forces and settlers have engaged in a wide-scale escalation of attacks on Palestinian Bedouins in this vast area, leading to the expulsion of dozens of communities from their ancestral grazing lands and displacing some 12,000 people, according to the al-Baidar Organization for the Defense of Bedouin Rights.

In previous years, the Israeli occupation has made persistent efforts to find alternative sites to transfer Bedouin communities and make way for the expansion of the Ma’ale Adumim settlement in the Jerusalem periphery. Israeli authorities repeatedly attempted to transfer these communities to areas such as “al-Jabal”, formally known as ‘Arab al Jahhalin village in al-‘Eizariya, al-Nuway’imah, and al-Fasayil in the Jordan Valley.

Eid Khamis Jahaleen, head of Khan al-Ahmar Bedouin community and a spokesperson for the East Jerusalem Badia, expressed his fears to Mondoweiss that “all Palestinian areas have become like Khan al-Ahmar: isolated communities whose residents are expelled to nearby areas, living in open-air prisons where they are prohibited from moving or pursuing their livelihoods, while facing ongoing settler attacks under the protection of the Israeli forces.”