“Former Housing Minister Uri Ariel ordered plans to be prepared for E1. It was his initiative, without the required authority. The Housing Ministry has no authority to plan or build beyond the Green Line. These plans have no standing and bind no one.”
That was Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s response in December 2015 to an initiative to build in the highly sensitive area between Jerusalem and the West Bank settlement of Ma’ale Adumim. Even then, Israel was governed by a firmly right-wing coalition.
Bezalel Smotrich
(Photo: Ryan Frois)
E1 is exceptionally sensitive, arguably the most politically explosive area in the West Bank after Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, known to Muslims as the Haram al-Sharif. It is no coincidence that every announcement of new construction there draws an immediate and forceful international response.
Over the years, almost every housing or defense minister, particularly those on the right, has announced plans for E1, despite, and perhaps because of, knowing how combustible the issue is. As recently as June 2023, a discussion on the project was again postponed under international pressure. That, too, happened under the same right-wing government now in power.
But time has passed, and the last remnants of restraint and concern about Israel’s international standing appear to have disappeared. For some policymakers, including Bezalel Smotrich, who exercises extensive authority over civilian affairs in the West Bank, inflaming tensions increasingly seems to be the objective.
And if Israel’s confrontation with the rest of the world can be deepened with declarations such as “we are no longer living under the British Mandate,” then the goal has already been achieved, even if not a single building is ultimately constructed.
That is how the current government operates: spectacle first. Anyone who manages to deepen Israel’s isolation is transformed, in the eyes of the anti-Zionist right, into a national hero.
The principal reason for the international sensitivity surrounding E1 is the argument that construction there would sever territorial continuity between the northern and southern West Bank and make a viable Palestinian state far more difficult to establish. That is precisely what Smotrich says he wants.
The goal is to inflame tensions before the election, in the hope that what is bad for the country will be good for a coalition built on draft evasion and collapse
Yet a Palestinian state is hardly around the corner. Palestinian leaders have repeatedly rejected proposals for statehood. The Jewish leadership before Israel’s establishment, and Israeli governments afterward, repeatedly accepted partition or compromise proposals, while Palestinian leaders rejected them.
Israel prospered. The Palestinians moved from one disaster to another. Nor were the settlements necessarily the central obstacle. Under virtually every serious peace proposal discussed in recent decades, the major settlement blocs would have remained under Israeli sovereignty. Under U.S. President Donald Trump’s earlier peace plan, no Israeli settlement was to be evacuated.
Israel could therefore continue making a strong case that Palestinian rejectionism has repeatedly blocked progress. But this government seems determined to destroy even that argument. Smotrich says construction in general, and in E1 in particular, “buries the idea of establishing a Palestinian state.” That is another statement from the department of strategic self-harm, and it is already appearing in headlines across the international media.
Israel has one strong and credible argument regarding decades of Palestinian rejectionism, and Smotrich insists on recasting Israel itself as the party rejecting peace. Who exactly does that serve?
Israel is already in a diplomatic free fall. The rise of right-wing parties across Europe, which polls suggest will continue in the coming years, will not shield Israel from mounting boycotts and diplomatic pressure. Europe’s right, including Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, has joined criticism of Israeli outposts, settlement farms and E1 construction.
The United States, still Israel’s most important ally, also opposes the new construction. But this government does not seem satisfied with diplomatic decline. It appears intent on turning it into collapse.
Under the current timetable, actual construction is not expected to begin before Israel’s election. So why is an outgoing government insisting on advancing a project that Netanyahu himself repeatedly halted in the past? Because the objective is to inflame the situation before voters go to the polls.
The same logic applies to Jewish extremists who rampage through the West Bank and, in some cases, kill Palestinians with little effective restraint. The IDF is warning of the risk of another intifada. What military officials appear to struggle to grasp is that, for some in this government’s political orbit, an intifada may not merely be a risk.
It may be the point. The calculation appears to be that what is bad for Israel could still be politically useful for the coalition. The national interest is the last thing on their minds.
They want chaos. They want flames and smoke. Another intifada would be disastrous for Israel and would cost many lives. But that is where this path leads.
Once again, Israel may find itself needing the White House to protect the country from the decisions of its own government.