The Israeli Defense Ministry is planning to advance a settlement project in the E-1 area of the occupied West Bank after the Israeli government withdrew the plan in January amid international pressure, media outlets and human rights groups reported recently. Israel's Subcommittee on Objections of the Higher Planning Council (HPC) of the Civil Administration will convene on July 18, 2022 to discuss the objections to the plans to establish a settlement of approximately 3,412 housing units in E-1.
The plan was deposited for objection by former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government during his election campaign in 2020 and the objections started to be heard in October 2021, shortly after Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennet’s meeting with U.S. President Joe Biden.
Last January, the Israeli government called off discussing the plan due to international pressure but now it is back on the agenda. U.S. Ambassador to Israel Thomas Nides spoke bluntly in a webinar to Americans for Peace Now about his efforts to halt the E-1 plans: "I went full board on E-1 ... It is a very important area which if (built) could cut off any possibility of a capital for the Palestinians." The homes would be built east of the Maale Adumim settlement in the middle of the occupied West Bank, breaking up contiguity between Palestinian neighborhoods in East Jerusalem and the Palestinian cities of Ramallah and Bethlehem.
The next stage in the planning process requires the Civil Administration's High Planning Subcommittee to hear the objections against projects, which were filed by a large number of Palestinian attorneys and several Israeli rights groups.
The Defense Ministry agenda was published just weeks after Israel presented other plans to build some 4,500 settlement units across the occupied West Bank, angering Washington. "The E-1 plan poses a real threat for the chance for peace and thus has gained sharp opposition in Israel and internationally," the left-wing Peace Now group said. It added that Bennett and Foreign Minister Yair Lapid's coalition government "is promoting Netanyahu's destructive policy instead of promoting a better future for the region. The use of the legal excuse according to which it's been forced on the government is a pathetic excuse that cannot hide the government's shame."
Far-reaching consequences
The E-1 area is 12 square kilometers (4.6 square miles) and stretches eastward from the boundary of annexed East Jerusalem, connecting it with the Maale Adumim settlement. The construction in E-1 will have far-reaching consequences as it will create an Israeli wedge between Ramallah and the north of the West Bank and between Bethlehem and the south of the West Bank, blocking future Palestinian contiguity between East Jerusalem and the West Bank. According to the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem, the implementation of the E-1 plan will have "far-reaching consequences and will interrupt the contiguity of the southern and northern West Bank."
It added that "the construction in E-1 will further increase the forced isolation between the West Bank and East Jerusalem. It will enclose East Jerusalem from the east, connect to the Israeli neighborhoods built north of Jerusalem's Old City, and create a physical and functional barrier between East Jerusalem and the Palestinian population in adjacent West Bank communities for which the city serves as the main metropolitan and religious center."
The construction in E-1 is considered to be the final nail in the coffin of the two-state solution and will create huge obstacles to the creation of a viable Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital.
On the other hand, the project will also mean the uprooting of roughly 3,000 Palestinian living in small Bedouin communities in the area, the most well-known of which is the village of Khan al-Ahmar. In October 2018, Israel began actions to uproot the Bedouin community in Khan al-Ahmar but was pressured by the European Union and several member states to freeze the move. It was reported that Israel was worried about repercussions in the International Criminal Court (ICC).
Although the E-1 plan was frozen for years, Israel made other advances in that period around the E-1 area to prepare for future construction. These included the opening of the Eastern Ring Road known as the "Apartheid Road" which allows Israel to divert Palestinian traffic away from the E-1 area.
It is a strategic area for the two-state solution and building a settlement in E-1 means that Israel is officially choosing to risk perpetual conflict instead of resolving it. "It is no less than a national disaster that must be stopped before it is too late," Peace Now said.
Maale Adumim
The Maale Adumim settlement was founded at the end of the 1970s within the context of a wider effort to create a belt of Jewish settlements in the metropolitan part of Jerusalem. This was executed with the aim of creating a territorial-demographic "fact on the ground," challenging the Palestinian presence in the area.
From the very start, the development of Maale Adumim has always been intimately connected, both in geopolitical and planning terms, to the development of the metropolitan area of Jerusalem. Years later, planning for the E-1 area clearly followed this metropolitan approach, allocating vast expanses of land for "regional needs" and "the social and economic benefit of the population of (Maale Adumim) and the district," meaning Jerusalem and the Jewish settlements in the area.
In the 1980s Maale Adumim began its steady and so far, uninterrupted growth, and with a current population of around 40,000, it is today one of the largest settlements in the West Bank. Israel’s policy of settling its civilians in occupied Palestinian territory and displacing the local population contravenes fundamental rules of international humanitarian law.
Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states: "The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies." It also prohibits the "individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory."
The extensive appropriation of land and destruction of property required to build and expand settlements also breach international humanitarian laws. The plans to establish a huge settlement in E-1 were always considered a fatal blow to peace and therefore previous Israeli governments refrained from advancing them but now Bennett’s government is promoting the agenda again.
The Biden administration and the international community, which have traditionally played a large role in deterring activity in E-1, must do so now as any viable future Palestinian state requires territorial contiguity to secure resources and natural growth, especially around Jerusalem and its suburbs. Palestinians and the international community alike believe the implementation of the E-1 plan will cause irreparable damage and will hinder resolving the crisis through the "two people, two states" formula – which envisions the birth of a Palestinian state alongside Israel and considers the armistice line of 1949 (the pre-1967 border) as the territorial basis for future interstate borders, with possible minimal land swaps and a special agreement on Jerusalem.