Far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich introduced on Wednesday that he plans to approve tenders to construct greater than 3,000 housing items within the extremely controversial E1 settlement challenge between Jerusalem and Ma’ale Adumim within the West Financial institution, saying the transfer “buries the concept of a Palestinian state.”
He stated Thursday that the plan is backed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The challenge has been frozen for many years amid fierce opposition from the worldwide neighborhood, who worry the brand new settlement neighborhood would stop the institution of a contiguous, viable Palestinian state.
“Approval of building plans in E1 buries the concept of a Palestinian state and continues the numerous steps we’re taking over the bottom as a part of the de facto sovereignty plan that we started implementing with the institution of the federal government,” Smotrich stated in his assertion on Wednesday.
“After many years of worldwide strain and freezes, we’re breaking conventions and connecting Ma’ale Adumim to Jerusalem. That is Zionism at its greatest — constructing, settling, and strengthening our sovereignty within the Land of Israel,” stated Smotrich, who can be a minister within the Protection Ministry answerable for the West Financial institution civilian points.
The potential building of a brand new neighborhood for the Ma’ale Adumim settlement within the so-called E1 zone has lengthy been trigger for alarm within the worldwide neighborhood. It will divide the West Financial institution into northern and southern areas and forestall the event of a Palestinian metropolis that connects East Jerusalem to Bethlehem and Ramallah, which the Palestinians have lengthy hoped would function the muse of their future state.
Smotrich stated in a speech on Thursday that Netanyahu helps his transfer. “He backs me up in all the things regarding Judea and Samaria, and is letting me create the revolution,” Smotrich stated at an occasion in Ma’ale Adumim organized by the Yesha Council, the umbrella group representing native authorities in settlements.
Israelis settlers and proper wing activists take part in a march within the space often known as E1 near the Israeli West Financial institution settlement of Ma’ale Adumim in protest at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s determination to dam building there, February 13, 2014. (Miriam Alster/FLASH90)
Smotrich, who holds a junior ministerial place inside the Protection Ministry that offers him vital affect over settlement building, stated the approvals for the long-frozen E1 settlement challenge are a response to a wave of Western international locations which have introduced or floated plans to acknowledge a Palestinian state on the United Nations subsequent month.
“Right now, anybody on the earth who tries to acknowledge a Palestinian state will obtain a solution from us on the bottom,” he declared. “Right now, we’re writing a historic chapter within the story of the redemption of the folks of Israel of their land.”
Smotrich boasted that “after 20 years of delays… the site visitors jam has been damaged [and] the E1 plan is underway,” including that the federal government is “fulfilling the promise and connecting Ma’ale Adumim with a strategic, safety and demographic connection, which ensures our united capital for generations.”
Thanking US President Trump and Ambassador Mike Huckabee for his or her backing, Smotrich stated that they’re “males of reality with a transparent and distinct ethical voice that isn’t confused by the hypocrisy of the West.”
Trump and Huckabee perceive “{that a} Palestinian state would endanger the existence of Israel” and that the West Financial institution is “an inseparable a part of our land, the one which God promised to our father Abraham and gave to us 1000’s of years in the past,” Smotrich stated.
View of neighborhoods within the Israeli settlement of Ma’ale Adumim, close to Jerusalem, on June 28, 2020. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
Trump and Huckabee didn’t seem to have commented particularly on Smotrich’s E1 announcement. Netanyahu likewise has remained mum on the step.
Smotrich appealed to the prime minister to “apply Israeli sovereignty in Judea and Samaria, to eternally take away from the agenda the concept of dividing the land and to make sure that by September the hypocritical leaders in Europe can have nothing to acknowledge.”
In keeping with the Peace Now settlement watchdog, the permitted plans are usually not for the unique E1 proposal, however fairly a separate neighborhood of Ma’ale Adumim.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich attends a press convention on the Finance Ministry in Jerusalem on August 6, 2025. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
“The three,300 housing items in Ma’ale Adumim characterize a rise of about 33% within the settlement’s housing inventory — an unlimited enlargement for a settlement whose inhabitants has been stagnant at round 38,000 for the previous decade and has skilled web out-migration. The tenders are for a big neighborhood that can join Ma’ale Adumim’s built-up space with the economic zone to its east,” Peace Now stated.
In an announcement, Israel Gantz, chair of Yesha, applauded the measure as “one other nice and historic achievement for the settlement on the eve of the applying of sovereignty,” thanking Smotrich and Netanyahu.
Ma’ale Adumim Mayor Man Yifrach stated that the “Palestinians sought to create a chokehold by means of unlawful building, and constructing the neighborhood will defeat their purpose.”
In March, the safety cupboard approved the development of the “Cloth of Life” Palestinian-only bypass highway within the Jerusalem space in a bid to separate Israeli and Palestinian site visitors and entrench Israel’s presence past the Inexperienced Line.
Hailing that transfer, the Prime Minister’s Workplace stated on the time that it could scale back congestion on the highway between the capital and Ma’ale Adumim and increase Israeli building in E1.
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