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.

In 1975, Israel expropriated 30 sq km of land on which seven Palestinian villages had once stood. Here they built Ma’ale Adumim, one of three Israeli settlement blocs that form an “outer ring” around the Israeli-defined municipal boundaries of Jerusalem.

Israeli authorities refer to these blocs as “facts on the ground”. They were initiated in the West Bank by the Israeli government after the 1967 War to ensure that Israeli population centres were protected from potential attacks.

Today, almost 40,000 Israelis live in Ma’ale Adumim – largely secular........

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