Planning body gives final approval to controversial E1 West Bank settlement project
The highly controversial E1 settlement project to build some 3,400 housing units between Jerusalem and the Ma’ale Adumim settlement in the West Bank is given final approval by the Higher Planning Committee of the Civil Administration, a Defense Ministry department.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who is also a minister in the Defense Ministry, calls the decision “historic,” and says it is “a significant step that practically erases the two-state delusion and consolidates the Jewish people’s hold on the heart of the Land of Israel.”
Adds the far-right minister, “The Palestinian state is being erased from the table not by slogans but by deeds. Every settlement, every neighborhood, every housing unit is another nail in the coffin of this dangerous idea.”
Smotrich gave his go-ahead for the plan last week.
The Peace Now organization, which campaigns against the settlement movement, concurs with Smotrich that the project severely threatens the viability of a future Palestinian state, adding that implementing the plans would take Israel toward becoming a binational state.
“Under the cover of war, Smotrich and his minority of messianic friends are establishing a delusional settlement that we will have to evacuate in any agreement,” says the organization, adding that billions of shekels may be spent, and wasted, on the development.
“The entire purpose of the settlement in E1 is to sabotage a political solution and rush towards a binational apartheid state.”
The E1 project is viewed by opponents of Israel’s West Bank settlements as a severe threat to Palestinian territorial contiguity and by extension the viability of a Palestinian state, since it would effectively divide the north of the West Bank from the south, as well as the West Bank from East Jerusalem.
Photo: Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich attends a press conference announcing his plans to approve more than 3,000 housing units in the E1 settlement project between occupied Jerusalem and the criminal settler colony Ma’ale Adumim on 14 August 2025. Source: Yonatan Sindel/Flash90.
