An Israeli flag flutters, as part of the Israeli settlement of Ma’ale Adumim in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, on August 14, 2025. RONEN ZVULUN / REUTERS
Israel approved a major settlement project on Wednesday, August 20, in an area of the occupied West Bank that the international community has warned threatens the viability of a future Palestinian state.
Israel has long had ambitions to build on the roughly 12-square-kilometer parcel known as E1 just East of Jerusalem, but the plan had been stalled for years amid international opposition.
The latest announcement also drew condemnation, with UN chief Antonio Guterres saying the settlement would effectively cleave the West Bank in two and pose an “existential threat” to a contiguous Palestinian state.
Last week, Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a former settler leader, backed plans to build some 3,400 homes on the ultra-sensitive tract of land, which lies between Jerusalem and the Israeli settlement of Ma’ale Adumim. Smotrich cast the approval as a rebuke to Western countries that announced their plans to recognize a Palestinian state in recent weeks.
“The Palestinian state is being erased from the table not with slogans but with actions,” he said on Wednesday. “Every settlement, every neighborhood, every housing unit is another nail in the coffin of this dangerous idea.”
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The Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority swiftly slammed the move. “This undermines the chances of implementing the two-state solution, establishing a Palestinian state on the ground, and fragments its geographic and demographic unity,” the PA’s foreign ministry said in a statement.
It added that the move would entrench “division of the occupied West Bank into isolated areas and cantons that are disconnected from one another, turning them into something akin to real prisons, where movement is only possible through Israeli checkpoints and under the terror of armed settler militias.”
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All of Israel’s settlements in the West Bank, occupied since 1967, are considered illegal under international law, regardless of whether they have Israeli planning permission. Israel heavily restricts the movement of West Bank Palestinians, who must obtain permits from authorities to travel through checkpoints to cross into East Jerusalem or Israel.
‘Bury’ Palestinian statehood
UN chief Antonio Guterres warned last week that constructing Israeli homes in the E1 area would “put an end to” hopes for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
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Aviv Tatarsky, a researcher at Ir Amim, an Israeli NGO focusing on Jerusalem within the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, also condemned the move. “Today’s approval demonstrates how determined Israel is in pursuing what Minister Smotrich has described as a strategic program to bury the possibility of a Palestinian state and to effectively annex the West Bank,” he said. “This is a conscious Israeli choice to implement an apartheid regime,” he added, calling on the international community to take urgent and effective measures against the move.
Asked about E1 in an interview with the Associated Press, US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee said talk of a two-state solution was not a “high priority” for the Trump administration and that there were too many unanswered questions about what a Palestinian state would look like. The State Department did not immediately respond to requests for further comment.
If the process moves quickly, infrastructure work in E1 could begin in the next few months and construction of homes could start in around a year. The plan includes around 3,500 apartments that would abut the existing settlement of Ma’ale Adumim. Smotrich also hailed the approval, during the same meeting, of 350 homes for the settlement of Ashael near Hebron.
Israel could, in theory, remove the settlement at some future date, as it did with its ones in Gaza in 2005 , but that possibility appears extremely remote at present given strong support for the settlements among Israel’s government and even some opposition parties.
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