The Israeli government has approved a plan for construction of a massive new settlement bloc in the controversial E1 area in the occupied West Bank.
In reviving a project first proposed in 1994, which will comprise about 3,500 new dwellings in a line across the West Bank, finance minister Bezalel Smotrich laid bare the intentions of his government. He declared that “approval of construction plans in E1 buries the idea of a Palestinian state, and continues the many steps we are taking on the ground as part of the de facto sovereignty plan”.
E1 (“East 1”) refers to 12 square kilometres of unsettled land east of Jerusalem. It sits inside the boundaries of the third most populous Israeli settlement in the West Bank, Ma’ale Adumim.
