E1 (West Bank)
Based on Wikipedia: E1 (West Bank)
The Twelve Square Kilometers That Could End the Two-State Solution
In August 2025, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich approved construction plans for 3,400 new homes in a patch of land smaller than many suburban townships. His words were blunt: this would "bury the Two-state solution." Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agreed, adding simply that the land belonged to Israel.
The patch of land in question is called E1, short for "East 1." In Hebrew, it's known as Mevaseret Adumim, which translates to "Herald of Adumim"—a name that signals its intended purpose as a gateway to the existing Israeli settlement of Ma'ale Adumim.
To understand why this small area generates such enormous controversy, you need to look at a map of the West Bank and imagine you're a Palestinian trying to travel from Bethlehem in the south to Ramallah in the north. These two cities are only about twenty miles apart as the crow flies. But between them lies Jerusalem—and increasingly, a growing belt of Israeli settlements that wraps around the city's eastern flank.
E1 sits in a critical gap in that belt. Fill it with Israeli construction, critics argue, and you've effectively cut the West Bank in two.
What E1 Actually Is
E1 covers approximately twelve square kilometers—about 4.6 square miles, or roughly 3,000 acres. To put that in perspective, it's about the size of Beverly Hills, California. The area is mountainous terrain located in what's known as Area C of the West Bank, which under the 1993 Oslo Accords remains under full Israeli military and civilian control.
The geography matters enormously here. E1 lies between the easternmost edges of East Jerusalem (which Israel annexed after the 1967 war, though most of the international community doesn't recognize that annexation) and Ma'ale Adumim, a large Israeli settlement of about 40,000 residents that sits east of what's called the "Green Line"—the armistice boundary established after Israel's 1948 War of Independence.
Currently, E1 is home to several Bedouin communities, including the village of Khan al-Ahmar. It also houses something that seems incongruous with the dusty terrain: the national headquarters of the Israel Police.
That police headquarters wasn't always there. Its construction in 2008 was one of the first major developments in the E1 area, and it represented a concrete step toward what had until then been mostly plans on paper.
The Contiguity Problem
The core of the E1 controversy comes down to a concept called territorial contiguity—whether a future Palestinian state could exist as a connected whole rather than as disconnected fragments.
Here's the geographic puzzle: East Jerusalem sits roughly in the middle of the West Bank, positioned between the northern portion (including cities like Ramallah and Nablus) and the southern portion (including Bethlehem and Hebron). Palestinians have long insisted that East Jerusalem should serve as the capital of any future Palestinian state.
Israeli settlements have grown around East Jerusalem in what some describe as a crescent shape. Ma'ale Adumim sits to the east. Givat Ze'ev lies to the northwest. Other settlements dot the landscape in between.
If E1 is built up, this crescent becomes a near-complete ring. Ma'ale Adumim would connect physically to Jerusalem through continuous Israeli development. The result, according to critics of the plan, would be a continuous Jewish population stretching from Jerusalem to Ma'ale Adumim—essentially extending Jerusalem's metropolitan area deep into the West Bank.
For Palestinians, this would mean that travel between the northern and southern West Bank would require going around this expanded Jerusalem bloc. Currently, Palestinians can travel on Route 1, but new bypass roads under construction would redirect them onto longer routes that loop around the settlement areas.
What the Plan Actually Proposes
The full E1 development plan is ambitious. It calls for building somewhere between 3,500 and 15,000 housing units—the numbers have varied over the years depending on which version of the plan is being discussed. But housing is only part of it.
The plan also includes a large industrial zone, commercial areas, and tourism facilities. There are proposals for a garbage dump and a large cemetery that would serve both Jerusalem and Ma'ale Adumim. Infrastructure for major highways has already been partially constructed, including roads leading to the planned residential areas.
Some of this infrastructure work began illegally. In mid-2004, the Ministry of Construction started clearing roads and preparing sites without the proper permits. Under Israeli planning law, construction requires a Specific Town Plan to be approved before permits can be issued. That hadn't happened, but the bulldozers moved anyway.
A History of Plans and Pauses
The E1 story stretches back more than three decades, marked by repeated advances and retreats as different Israeli governments navigated domestic pressure to build against international pressure to stop.
The area first came under Ma'ale Adumim's municipal control in 1991, during the government of Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir. But the real impetus came from Yitzhak Rabin, a figure often associated with the peace process. In the mid-1990s, Rabin expanded Ma'ale Adumim's borders to include E1 and instructed his Housing Minister, Binyamin Ben Eliezer, to begin planning a neighborhood there.
This detail often surprises people. Rabin, who would win the Nobel Peace Prize alongside Yasser Arafat and Shimon Peres for the Oslo Accords, supported developing E1. He just never actually built anything there.
That pattern would repeat itself. Every Israeli prime minister since Rabin has supported the plan in principle. Shimon Peres affirmed it. Ehud Barak put it on the negotiating table at the Taba talks in 2001. Benjamin Netanyahu has pushed it forward multiple times. Yet for decades, actual construction remained minimal, limited mainly to that police headquarters and some infrastructure work.
The reason is straightforward: the United States and European Union have consistently opposed the plan. American opposition has been particularly effective. In 2009, Israel reached an understanding with the U.S. government to refrain from building in E1. The Bush administration had previously pressured Israel to halt construction there.
The International Legal Dispute
The international community, including the United Nations, the European Union, and most countries worldwide, considers Israeli settlements in the West Bank to be illegal under international law. The relevant provision is Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which prohibits an occupying power from transferring parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.
Israel disputes this interpretation. The Israeli government argues that the Fourth Geneva Convention doesn't apply to the West Bank because the territory wasn't previously the sovereign possession of any state—Jordan's annexation of the area after 1948 was recognized by only two countries. Israel also contends that settlements don't constitute a "transfer" of population in the sense the convention intended, since settlers move voluntarily rather than being forcibly relocated by the government.
This legal disagreement has persisted for decades and shows no signs of resolution. What matters practically is that the international community treats settlement expansion as a violation of international law, which is why E1 construction announcements consistently trigger diplomatic protests.
The Two-State Mathematics
The United Nations and European Union have been explicit: construction in E1 would deal a "fatal blow" to the two-state solution, making it "almost inconceivable."
But the Israeli government disputes this characterization. Officials argue that E1 poses no threat to the formation of a continuous Palestinian state because Palestinians could still travel between the northern and southern West Bank—just via different routes. They point to bypass roads that Israel has constructed specifically to address Palestinian travel concerns.
The 2008 peace proposal from then-Prime Minister Ehud Olmert included provisions for an area twelve miles wide between Ma'ale Adumim and the Jordan River that would remain under Palestinian control. Israel offered to build a road connecting Bethlehem and Ramallah as part of a comprehensive settlement. The Palestinians rejected that offer.
Here we encounter one of those situations where both sides can be technically correct while describing entirely different realities. Yes, it's possible to draw maps showing Palestinian travel routes that loop around the E1 area. But critics respond that such routes would significantly increase travel times and that forcing Palestinians to use bypass roads while Israelis use direct routes creates a system of separate and unequal infrastructure.
More fundamentally, Palestinians view E1 development as part of a broader effort to "Judaize Jerusalem"—to create demographic and geographic facts on the ground that would make it impossible to ever establish East Jerusalem as a Palestinian capital.
The Strategic Israeli Argument
Israeli supporters of the E1 plan frame it primarily as a security issue. Military officials argue that E1 is necessary for Israel to possess defensible borders, particularly for protecting Jerusalem.
The mayor of Ma'ale Adumim, Bennie Kashriel, has explained the strategic logic: without E1, Ma'ale Adumim remains detached from Jerusalem—a twelve-minute car ride away but vulnerable to anyone who controls the intervening high ground. He compares the situation to Mount Scopus during the period from 1948 to 1967, when that hilltop area containing Hebrew University remained an Israeli enclave surrounded by Jordanian-controlled territory, accessible only by convoy along a narrow corridor.
From this perspective, E1 isn't about expansion but about connection—linking Ma'ale Adumim securely to Jerusalem so that 40,000 Israeli residents aren't isolated in the event of conflict.
The Bedouin Question
Largely absent from the high-level diplomatic debates are the people who actually live in E1: Bedouin communities, including the Jahalin tribe.
The Jahalin say they've resided in the area since the 1950s with the consent of landowners from the nearby Palestinian towns of Abu Dis and al-Eizariya. Israeli authorities contest this, claiming the Jahalin only began settling there around 1988.
This dispute matters because Israeli efforts to relocate the Bedouin are often interpreted as preparing the ground for settlement construction. At one point, authorities planned to resettle the Jahalin near the Abu Dis garbage dump—a proposal that was eventually abandoned after protests. But Israel has confirmed its intention to concentrate the Bedouin communities in a single location, which would fundamentally alter their traditional semi-nomadic way of life.
The European Union has submitted formal protests over these evictions and the demolition of Palestinian structures in E1. Israel has denied that the relocations are connected to settlement plans.
The 2012 Escalation
The E1 issue exploded into international headlines in December 2012. The trigger was a vote at the United Nations General Assembly upgrading the Palestinian Authority to "non-member observer state" status—a symbolic but significant recognition of Palestinian statehood.
Israel's response came the next day: an announcement that it would resume planning and zoning work in E1, along with plans for 3,000 new housing units. EU ministers expressed "dismay." Five European countries summoned Israeli ambassadors to protest. Britain and France threatened to withdraw their ambassadors entirely.
The international backlash was intense enough that Israel again put the brakes on actual construction. But the pattern was clear: E1 had become a card that Israeli governments could play—or threaten to play—in response to diplomatic developments they opposed.
Recent Developments
The years since 2012 have seen continued back-and-forth. The Netanyahu government restarted work on the Eastern Ring Road (Route 4370) after it had been frozen for years due to its relationship to E1 development. The first section opened in January 2019.
In February 2020, Netanyahu announced he would advance the frozen E1 construction plans, drawing immediate EU condemnation. A month later, then-Defense Minister Naftali Bennett approved a new road connecting with Route 4370, designed to separate Palestinian and Israeli traffic in the area. Critics viewed this road as a major step toward enabling residential construction in E1.
American pressure has continued as well. In 2021, twenty-six House Democrats urged Secretary of State Antony Blinken to pressure Israel against E1 construction. In 2022, twenty-nine Democrats called on the Biden administration to prevent what they termed a "doomsday" settlement.
Then came August 2025, when Finance Minister Smotrich approved those 3,400 housing units with his stark declaration about burying the two-state solution. This wasn't a euphemism or a diplomatic formulation—it was the explicit stated purpose.
What Makes E1 Different
Israel has built many settlements in the West Bank over the decades. What makes E1 uniquely contentious is its location and what that location represents.
Most settlements, however controversial, don't fundamentally alter the geographic possibilities for a future Palestinian state. They might complicate negotiations, create facts on the ground that would need to be addressed in any peace deal, or impose hardships on nearby Palestinian communities. But they don't structurally change what's possible.
E1 is different because of where it sits on the map. It's the critical gap in the ring of Israeli development around East Jerusalem. Fill that gap, and the geographic logic of the two-state solution—two peoples, two states, each with its own contiguous territory—becomes extraordinarily difficult to realize.
This is why relatively modest construction announcements in E1 generate responses that might seem disproportionate compared to much larger settlement expansions elsewhere. The numbers aren't the point. The location is.
The Future
What happens next in E1 remains uncertain. Past patterns suggest that international pressure, particularly from the United States, can delay but not permanently prevent Israeli development. Each successive Israeli government has pushed the plans a bit further—more infrastructure, more roads, more planning approvals.
The 2025 announcement from Smotrich suggests a shift in approach: rather than advancing E1 quietly while publicly emphasizing security concerns, the government is now explicitly framing the development as a means of foreclosing the two-state option entirely.
For Palestinians, E1 represents something larger than the specific territory in question. It symbolizes what they describe as a systematic effort to establish irreversible facts on the ground before any peace agreement can be reached. The Bedouin families being displaced, the bypass roads rerouting Palestinian travel, the police headquarters already standing—all of it looks like the gradual foreclosure of possibilities.
For Israelis who support the plan, E1 is about security, natural growth, and the connection of communities that have existed for decades. Ma'ale Adumim isn't going anywhere under any realistic peace scenario—multiple proposals from Israeli and Palestinian negotiators alike have assumed it would remain part of Israel. The question is whether it remains an isolated outpost or becomes integrated with Jerusalem.
These twelve square kilometers, smaller than many urban parks, have become perhaps the most consequential piece of real estate in the entire Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Not because of what they contain, but because of what building there would mean for everything else.