The plan for the huge settlement in what is technically termed E1, just east of Jerusalem, has been pushed for years by Israeli ultranationalists and settler leaders, including Smotrich, but had been on hold for decades because of fierce international opposition.
In August, the project for 20,000 housing units got final approval, prompting Smotrich to brag, “the Palestinian state is being erased from the table not with slogans, but with actions.”
Most peace plans envision the Israeli and Palestinian states being based on the borders as they existed before the Six-Day War of 1967 with some agreed land swaps to smooth things out — but that formula has always been anathema to Netanyahu and Israel’s rightwing parties. They reject outright any prospect of Palestinian statehood.
Aside from the East Jerusalem project, Netanyahu’s rightwing coalition government has been ramping up settlements at the fastest rate in years, expanding them significantly and then quickly consolidating them with road networks and other permanent infrastructure.
From November 2023 to October 2024, an unprecedented 49 new Israeli outposts have been established, bringing the current total in the West Bank to 141 settlements.
Dozen of others are in the pipeline, escalating what former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, a Netanyahu critic, told POLITICO recently was “annexation by stealth.”