Building plans in the West Bank area east of Jerusalem have been delayed by successive Israeli governments since the 1990s. Now, Israel is moving ahead with construction, which could divide Palestinian territory and threaten a future Palestinian state
by Linda Dayan 30 August 2026 Haaretz
A view of the settlement of Ma'aleh Adumim. Credit: Itay Cohen
E1 is a small stretch of land – about 12 square kilometers (4.6 square miles) – within Area C, the part of the West Bank under full Israeli civil and security control. Most of it has been declared Israeli state land, and is sparsely populated, dotted with Palestinian towns and villages. The "E" in E1 stands for east – as in east of Jerusalem – and the "1" designates this particular area, which lies between Jerusalem and the settlement of Ma'aleh Adumim.
For Israel, building settlements in E1 is a way to expand the capital's cramped municipal borders and link Jerusalem to Ma'aleh Adumim, a city of close to 40,000, in a contiguous area of Israeli sovereignty, ensuring that neither city could be cut off from other Israeli communities in wartime.
But where Israelis see contiguity, Palestinians see the bisection of a would-be Palestinian state, cutting the northern and southern parts of the West Bank from each other. E1 sits between Jerusalem and the major Palestinian cities of Ramallah and Bethlehem. Israeli control would cut East Jerusalem – which Palestinians claim as the capital for their future state – off from the West Bank, and place a settlement bloc in the center of a major Palestinian metropolitan area.
Building there would also put the roughly 20 Palestinian communities at severe risk of eviction and demolition. According to Ir Amim, an Israeli NGO focused on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the greater Jerusalem area, some 5,000 Palestinians live in the zone.
After the International Criminal Court in The Hague issued an arrest warrant for Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich in May, the far-right politician vowed to immediately sign an eviction order for the village of Khan al-Ahmar, one of the Palestinian villages in E1.
Over the decades, the plan has drawn significant international pushback and been frozen several times due to foreign – mostly American – pressure. Undeterred, the current far-right government has taken the project further than any of its predecessors: It has started preparing for an Israeli-only road connecting Jerusalem and Ma'aleh Adumim, and last week issued a tender for building some 1,200 housing units in the area.
European countries including France, Germany, Italy and the U.K. have condemned the latest developments, as have several Arab states. Gadi Eisenkot, who maintains a slight lead over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in current election polls, has called the move "a mistake that comes at an international cost."
The decades-long push to build in E1
Plans to build in E1 stretch back to the early 1990s, part of a vision to expand the settlement – and municipal authority – of Ma'aleh Adumim, a city established in 1975.
In 1991, then-Construction and Housing Minister Ariel Sharon pushed to build settlements around Jerusalem for both strategic and demographic reasons. Doing so would connect the capital with Ma'aleh Adumim, expanding Israeli sovereignty and establishing Jewish communities in the narrow strip. "We're dealing with a matter that relates to the Jews, their security and their existence," he told reporters during a tour of the area that May.
At the time, a member of the Jerusalem municipality warned that annexing the area would also mean absorbing the thousands of Palestinians living along the city's edge – a demographic challenge in itself, one that would heighten tensions in the city and create new security challenges.
The plans first took shape under Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in the mid-1990s, as the peace process stalled: Building in E1 would keep Ma'aleh Adumim and Jerusalem from being surrounded by Palestinian communities. The international backlash was swift, and the plan was shelved.
In 2004, Israel's Construction and Housing Ministry began work in the area. After the Palestinian Authority complained to the Bush administration, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice asked for clarification. In 2005, President George W. Bush said that the U.S. road
map for Israeli-Palestinian peace "calls for no expansion of the settlements," a message he would deliver to Prime Minister Sharon at future meetings. Under that pressure, work on E1 was frozen that year.
In 2012, after the Palestinians achieved non-member observer status at the United Nations, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu resurrected the E1 building plan, this time with 3,400 new homes slated for the area. Once again it drew broad international condemnation: several European nations summoned Israeli ambassadors right after the announcement, and others threatened sanctions unless the expansion was rescinded. The U.S. also urged Israel to reconsider, and Jerusalem eventually buckled, delaying building once more.
Route 1, which runs from Tel Aviv in the west through Jerusalem toward Jericho in the West Bank. Credit:Atefrat
In March 2025, Israel approved the construction of a separate road for Palestinians near Jerusalem – one that will link northern and southern West Bank villages and divert Palestinian traffic from Route 1, the highway running from Tel Aviv in the west through Jerusalem toward Jericho in the West Bank.
As a result, Route 1 will primarily serve Israeli – that is, Jewish – residents. Earlier this year, the Civil Administration demolished Palestinian shops along the road's route, most of them in the Palestinian town of Al-Eizariya, inside the E1 area.
The new road will trap two Palestinian communities between it and Route 1, cutting them off entirely from their surroundings – a move expected to accelerate their expulsion. Diverting Palestinian traffic from Route 1 onto the bypass road will also block vehicle access to other communities in the area, severing them from the rest of the West Bank's Palestinian towns – which is also expected to accelerate their expulsion.
In August 2025, a subcommittee of the Civil Administration – the Israeli Defense Ministry department that oversees the West Bank – approved yet another contentious E1 building plan. Far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said of the approval: "The Palestinian state is being erased – not in slogans, but in actions." He also urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to "complete the move and apply full Israeli sovereignty" in the West Bank.
Ending hopes for a Palestinian state?
In a joint statement condemning the E1 tenders, Germany, Canada, France, Italy, Norway, the Netherlands and the U.K. said the E1 settlement "will compromise the prospects for a two-state solution by dividing the West Bank and undermining Palestinian territorial contiguity." In other words, severing the northern West Bank from the south would make a Palestinian state far harder to establish.
Aviv Tatarsky, a researcher at the Israeli NGO Ir Amim told Haaretz that while Israel has built many settlements in the West Bank that pose no threat to a future peace process, E1 is exceptional. "Its location gives it a very significant, very dramatic influence," he said, noting that sticking a large Israeli settlement in the middle of the Bethlehem-Jerusalem-Ramallah axis would be like claiming a swath of territory between Tel Aviv and the nearby city of Ramat Gan for the U.K. – or a stretch between Pennsylvania and New York for Russia. It could make it far harder for a Palestinian state to function.
Some may argue that these steps are reversible, but the fact that Israel has gone as far as issuing the tenders makes the plan significantly more difficult to halt, Tatarsky says. "Today, it can be stopped – it's still possible." Contractors will submit their construction bids with a deadline that falls just before Israel's October election – too soon for any future government to halt it.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich presents the approved E1 building plan at a press conference near Ma'aleh Adumim, August 2025. Credit: Menahem Kahana/AFP
If the government does not stop the process now, it will sign a contract with the winning bidder. "After that, there aren't any other steps that can be intervened in – not legally and not politically. The contractor will have the rights, and he'll be able to build. He'll have a financial interest in building, and the question of a Palestinian state won't be relevant to him."
Netanyahu's government, though, has signaled it is unlikely to halt or reverse the process. For decades, the U.S. and Europe have made E1 building a red line: "Successive Israeli governments over these past 20 years – most of them Netanyahu governments, but different governments – knew this, tried a few times to advance E1, and were forced to stop because of international pressure," Tatarsky said. That Israel is moving forward with the plan regardless of years of international uproar, he added, "shows you that Israel doesn't care" about the consequences.
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