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Graphic:
Map, E1. Published by IMEMC News
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by IMEMC News
Aug 18, 2025

The Jerusalem Governorate announced Monday that approximately 7,000 Palestinians living in 22 communities across the Jerusalem wilderness are at imminent risk of forced displacement due to the expansion of Israel’s colonial E1 project and the construction of the so-called “Sovereignty Road.”

In addition to its broader impact, the colonial infrastructure will effectively sever the communities of Jabal al-Baba and Wadi Jamal from the nearby town of al-‘Eizariya, isolating nearly 100 residents and deepening the fragmentation of Palestinian life in the area.

Just days ago, Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich approved the construction of thousands of colonialist units within the E1 zone, located east of occupied Jerusalem.

The move is widely condemned as a strategic blow to any viable Palestinian state, undermining territorial contiguity and entrenching the geographic and demographic fragmentation of the West Bank into disconnected enclaves.

According to B’Tselem – The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories – the implementation of E1 construction plans will establish uninterrupted urban continuity between the Ma’ale Adumim colony and Jerusalem.

This will intensify the isolation of East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank and severely disrupt the geographic link between its northern and southern regions.

In related news, the Israeli army invaded the Ennab area in ath-Thaheriya town, south of Hebron in the southern West Bank, and demolished several shops.

It is worth noting that in July of this year, the Israeli army demolished 122 Palestinian structures, including 60 inhabited homes, 11 vacant homes, 22 agricultural buildings, and 26 commercial sheds. Additionally, demolition orders were issued targeting 33 more structures.

All of Israel’s colonies in the occupied West Bank, including those in and around occupied East Jerusalem, are illegal under International Law, the Fourth Geneva Convention in addition to various United Nations and Security Council resolutions. They also constitute war crimes under International 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”.
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Haaretz Editorial | Smotrich Is Right: Israel's New Settlement Plan Will Bury a Palestinian State

Haaretz Editorial
Aug 15, 2025

Next week, the cabinet is expected to give final approval to a construction plan for the E1 region, which would cut the West Bank in two, separating the northern part from the southern part. After years of delay due to international pressure, the cabinet intends to approve a plan with dramatic, irreversible implications for the occupied territory's future.

On Thursday, Hagar Shezaf and Jack Khoury reported in Haaretz that the Civil Administration's Supreme Planning Council, which is subordinate to Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and his people, has already discussed building 3,412 apartments in E1. These apartments would be a death sentence for any chance of establishing a viable Palestinian state. Not only would it use up the last remaining land reserves in the heart of the West Bank, but such a takeover would strangle three central Palestinian cities – Ramallah, East Jerusalem and Bethlehem. Around a million Palestinians live in those three cities.

It's no accident that Smotrich, the plan's godfather, said on Thursday that "this reality will finally bury the idea of the Palestinian state, because there will be nothing to recognize." Smotrich has never made a more accurate prediction. If E1 is built for the settlers, this will end the chances of establishing a Palestinian state.

While the vast majority of the world's countries – a number that has grown even further in recent weeks – believe in the two-state solution and recognize a Palestinian state, along comes Israel's government and spits in their faces. If the world were lacking reasons to turn Israel into a pariah state, hated and untouchable, along comes the E1 plan to give it another convincing reason.

The decision to build this fateful settlement must be seen in its broader context. E1 isn't enough to satisfy the appetite for real estate demonstrated by Smotrich and his gang, so they are also working to officially annex the West Bank to Israel, or at least Area C (the part of the West Bank assigned to full Israeli control by the Oslo Accords). At the same time, new facts on the ground are being created, with the goal of pushing Palestinians out of Area C. And the ultimate vision is to one day expel them from the entire West Bank.

To the plan's sponsors, all means are legitimate, and the state whitewashes and enables them all – settlers carrying out daily pogroms and violent attacks, killing farmers and torching property; turning the West Bank into hundreds of isolated enclaves separated by iron gates at the entrance to every village and city, which the army can lock at any moment, and in fact does; creating a network of hundreds of permanent and temporary checkpoints on the roads; and establishing dozens of farming settlements by violent settlers since the war in the Gaza Strip began. These settlements are unique for the vast amount of territory they control following their establishment, ostensibly for use as pasturage for the settlers' herds.

That is how you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state. And that is how you lay the groundwork for a large-scale population transfer from the West Bank.

The above article is Haaretz's lead editorial, as published in the Hebrew and English newspapers in Israel.