Yossi Schwartz ISL (RCIT section in Israel/Occupied Palestine) 15.08.2025
The Zionist recommendation is expected to give final approval next week to the construction plans in the E1 area, which will cut off the northern and southern parts of the West Bank. The controversial plan, which has been delayed for years due to international pressure, has significant implications for the ability to reach a two-state solution and is expected to elicit harsh criticism worldwide.
The Civil Administration’s Supreme Planning Council discussed the building plans last month, for the first time since 2021. Last week, a hearing was held on the objections to the plan, but all of them were rejected. As a result, a hearing was scheduled to approve the validation process, the final stage in approving the process by the Supreme Planning Council. Once the plan is approved, the state will be able to issue tenders for construction and building permits, after which the construction itself will begin.
The three organizations opposing the plan, Peace Now, Ir Amim, and the Association for Environmental Justice, claim that the area where construction in E1 is planned is the only land reserve in the heart of the three main cities in the West Bank – Ramallah, East Jerusalem, and Bethlehem – where about one million Palestinians live. Therefore, they explain, the construction plan will create a continuum of settlements from the center of the West Bank to Jerusalem, and in their opinion, will harm the ability to reach a future peace agreement in which a Palestinian state will be established with East Jerusalem as its capital.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said at the Makor Rishon settlement conference in May that the government would approve construction in E1. “We’ve been talking about it for years, we’ll approve the plans, we’re already working on it professionally,” said Smotrich, who also serves as a minister in the Defense Ministry. “This is how they kill the de facto Palestinian state, with God’s help, there will be sovereignty (in the West Bank) in this term.” According to him, these actions will encourage a significant increase in the number of settlers in the West Bank: “This is how a million residents are brought.”
In March, the Political-Security Cabinet approved the construction of a separate road for Palestinians south of E1 to implement the construction plans and the future annexation of Ma’ale Adumim. The road that will be paved will connect the Palestinian villages in the northern West Bank to those in the south, diverting Palestinian traffic from Route 1. As a result, the section of the road between Jerusalem and Ma’ale Adumim will be used exclusively by Jewish residents.
The only solution is a single Palestinian socialist democracy from the river to the sea. A state to which the Palestinian refugees will return, and the Israeli Jewish minority will get cultural and religious equal rights.