The Israeli government on Wednesday approved construction in an open tract of land east of Jerusalem, angering proponents of the two-state solution who argue the development would cut a potential Palestinian state in two. For decades, Israel left the area undeveloped due to international pressure. But increasingly anti-Semitic attitudes from nearly every nation but the U.S. convinced the world’s only majority-Jewish state that now was the time to act.
The planned settlement project would construct some 3,400 housing units in a zone label “E1,” short for “East One,” which lies east of Jerusalem, between the Israeli capital and the existing settlement of Ma’ale Adumim. Construction could begin within a year. The plan was approved by the Higher Planning Committee of the Civil Administration, a department of Israel’s Defense Ministry.
Israeli plans for an E1 settlement have been postponed for decades due to pressure from international proponents of a two-state solution. The settlement’s location would sever the most direct link between the Palestinian enclaves of Ramallah and Bethlehem, thus making any Palestinian state carved around feel disjointed and unnatural. This international pressure has come not only from Israel’s adversaries, but even from the U.S. under former administrations.
Unsurprisingly then, Israel’s approval of the plan generated widespread international criticism:
- The Palestinian Authority complained that the E1 settlement “fragments … geographic and demographic unity, entrenching the 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.”
- N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric condemned the plan because it “will drive a stake through the heart of the two-state solution.”
- In a statement, 21 foreign secretaries (from Canada, Japan, and 19 European nations) also warned, “if implemented, it would divide a Palestinian state in two, mark a flagrant breach of international law, and critically undermine the two-state solution.”
- The U.K. separately summoned Israeli Ambassador Tzipi Hotovely to register its disapproval.
For Israel, undermining a potential “two-state solution” is precisely the point. “The Palestinian state is being erased from the table not with slogans but with actions,” Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich declared. “Every settlement, every neighborhood, every housing unit is another nail in the coffin of this dangerous idea.” Smotrich oversees settlement policy and hopes to double the settler population in Judea and Samaria. The Israeli Security Cabinet previously approved 22 other settlements in May.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also endorses the same end goal. “I said 25 years ago that we will do everything to secure our grip on the Land of Israel, to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state, to prevent the attempts to uproot us from here. Thank God, what I promised, we have delivered,” he said Sunday.
Of course, the original “two-state solution” occurred after World War II, when Great Britain divided the Mandate of Palestine into what became the Kingdom of Jordan and the state of Israel. But Arabs living in the Jewish portion, supported at first by the entire Arab world, raised such a stink that international powers contemplated carving another state out of Israel’s portion, to give to the people now called “Palestinians.”
From 2006 to 2023, the Gaza Strip provided the world with a pilot project of what a potential third Palestinian state would like: brutal control by radical jihadists, who oppressed the people and simply used the land to inflict war and terror upon Israel. Hamas’s massacre on October 7 convinced the Israelis that they must never allow the creation of another terrorist-run Palestinian state. Apparently, the same crisis convinced the rest of the world to create a much larger, terrorist-run Palestinian state.
The Trump administration is the notable exception to this “rest of the world.” While Israel’s former allies like Australia and the U.K. have abandoned her to recognize a non-existent Palestinian state, the Trump administration is the friendliest Israel has seen this century. Under President Trump, the U.S. State Department has adopted — or rather restored — the historical terminology “Judea and Samaria” for the land that more recently acquired the name “West Bank.” When a press officer objected to this terminology, he was fired.
The Trump administration’s friendlier posture includes greater acceptance for Israeli settlements in Judea and Samaria. When asked about E1’s approval in an interview, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee answered that a two-state solution was not a “high priority” for the administration.
From these various reactions to Israel’s approval of a settlement in E1, two premises become clear. First, both Israel and its global adversaries view this tract of land as an essential link between Palestinian enclaves, which would be necessary to the contiguity and coherence of any future Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria. Second, Israel controls this tract of land so thoroughly that it can build infrastructure on it, while its critics can only complain. These premises lead to the conclusion: the creation of any future Palestinian state would involve taking land currently controlled by Israel and giving it to the Palestinian Authority (PA), which sponsors terrorism against Israel. Such a state would be like Hamas-controlled Gaza from 2006-2023, except bigger.
This reasoning does not only apply to the plot of land designated “E1,” but to nearly the entirety of Judea and Samaria. Israel holds total control over the entire region, except for a number of disconnected enclaves, where about three million Palestinians live. Even in these enclaves, which Israel allows to govern themselves under loose administration by the PA, Israeli security forces regularly enter to track down terrorists. Israeli checkpoints monitor traffic on the major highways.
The point is, Israel is the state that exercises sovereign control over Judea and Samaria. International naysayers have no right to tell it how to develop or not develop any piece of real estate in the area. They certainly have no right to base such restrictions on the remote possibility that a hypothetical, future state will be created in the region, which would necessarily entail taking territory from Israel.
There is no quicker way to explode the mythology of a two-state solution than for Israelis to build communities and live in the biblical heartland they control. Israel knows it, and their international adversaries know it. Now, Israel is taking action, and no other nation has the authority to stop them.
