Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich declared Thursday that while he and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are in sharp disagreement over Hamas, “in the West Bank he lets me do everything.” He made the comments at a press conference in Maaleh Adumim, where he formally announced the start of the E1 construction project.
Smotrich criticized countries that recently announced plans to recognize a Palestinian state, saying their moves would only speed up a declaration of Israeli sovereignty in the West Bank.
On Wednesday, Smotrich said he had “approved” the E1 plan, which calls for 3,401 new housing units in Maaleh Adumim — a project that the group Peace Now has called “a death blow to the Palestinian state.” If there are no delays, construction could begin within months on the land, which has been at the center of years of dispute and is considered a highly sensitive site internationally.
The E1 area’s development would sever the territorial continuity of a future Palestinian state between Ramallah and Bethlehem. Until now, both Europe and the United States have blocked Israeli attempts to advance building there, but the plan is now moving forward at unprecedented speed.
Over the past two years, Smotrich and his allies have expanded settlements, approved new construction, seized land and declared state land in the West Bank. Now, he says, they are actively working to eliminate the idea of a Palestinian state in the face of what he called an “international tsunami” of recognition efforts.
“Judea and Samaria are an inseparable part of our land,” Smotrich told reporters, using the biblical name for the West Bank. “I thank the prime minister, with whom I have a sharp disagreement on the destruction of Hamas, but in the West Bank he allows me to lead the revolution we’ve been carrying out for the past two years.”
He said the E1 plan also sends a message to the international community: “Those who try to recognize a Palestinian state will get an answer from us on the ground — not in documents or declarations, but in facts: homes, neighborhoods, roads and more Jewish families building their lives. They will talk about the false Palestinian dream, and we will continue building a Jewish reality that buries the idea of a Palestinian state once and for all.”
Smotrich urged Netanyahu to ““apply Israeli sovereignty in Judea and Samaria, to forever remove from the agenda the idea of dividing the land and and to ensure that by September the hypocritical leaders in Europe will have nothing to recognize. Jerusalem is our eternal, undivided capital. Our future depends not on the nations, but on the Jewish people. I think we are very close to a historic declaration of sovereignty in Judea and Samaria.”
Maaleh Adumim Mayor Guy Yifrah said the new neighborhood “will connect Maaleh Adumim to Jerusalem, strengthen the settlement and give our younger generation the opportunity to build their homes here, in their hometown, alongside their families and communities. We are not just building a neighborhood — we are building the future. This is a victory for determination and love of the land.”