Ahead of the October 27 Knesset election, it appears that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will go to any lengths to return to office. The controversy over building 1,200 housing units in E-1 is just the latest example. East 1, or E-1 for short, is a small piece of territory, about 12 square kilometres, in the West Bank. It is part of the municipal limits of the settlement of Ma’ale Adumim and lies east of East Jerusalem. Ma’ale Adumim was established as a settlement in 1975, when Yitzhak Rabin was prime minister, and was upgraded to city status in 1991. With close to 35,000 Israeli citizens (2015 figures), it is one of the largest Israeli settlements in the occupied territories.

Since the Oslo Accords of 1993, there have been plans to connect Ma’ale Adumim to Jerusalem’s municipal boundaries. The purpose was twofold: To provide territorial continuity between the two and to expand and consolidate Jerusalem’s demographic and strategic security.

Under the Taba Agreement of September 1995 (signed just weeks before Rabin’s assassination), the E-1 enclave was part of Area C, where Israel has complete security control. The area is largely uninhabited and covers about 12,000 dunums, or about 12 square kilometres. Since January 1994, weeks after the signing of the Declaration of Principles with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, various Israeli governments have toyed with the idea of establishing a settlement in E-1. Under the Clinton Parameters of December 2000, E-1 was supposed to be part of a swap deal........

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