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E1 and "Greater Jerusalem"

E1 (short for "East 1") is a piece of land east of Jerusalem, between the city and the settlement of Ma'ale Adumim. On a map it looks small. It is the single most important piece of the settlement project, because building on it does two things at once: it joins Jerusalem to the settlement blocs east of it, and it cuts the West Bank into a northern half and a southern half. A Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital becomes physically impossible. That is why, for almost thirty years, the world told Israel not to build there, and why the current government built it anyway.

Thirty years of "don't"​

The Jerusalem lawyer Daniel Seidemann, an Israeli who has tracked settlement planning for decades, tells the story in his own words. In 1997 someone sent him "a thick document": "It was a massive new settlement in the occupied West Bank between Jerusalem and the Jordan River Valley. It was glaringly evident that it would have a devastating impact on any possible future political agreement. It was called E-1." He took it to the Clinton State Department, where, he writes, a senior official got down on the floor with him over the maps and said, "This goes to the White House." Months later he heard "that Clinton had told Netanyahu, who was Prime Minister at the time: 'Don't'. And Netanyahu didn't."

"Every American President (until Trump) and every major world leader, told Israel: 'don't'. And every Israeli Prime Minister refrained from building E-1." He names British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, Condoleezza Rice, President George W. Bush, and Angela Merkel as leaders who stopped it at different times. "Until now. This is one example of an unshackled Netanyahu recklessly and defiantly taking Israel to places we never went before." His verdict: "no single settlement jeopardizes the very possibility of ever ending occupation and reaching an agreement with the Palestinians" (Daniel Seidemann on X, 9 September 2026).

"Buries the idea of a Palestinian state"​

On 14 August 2025, two days after Prime Minister Netanyahu told i24 television he connects "very much" to the vision of Greater Israel (see Netanyahu's "Very Much"), Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich announced approval of more than 3,000 homes in E1. He said the move "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," and called it "Zionism at its best — building, settling, and strengthening our sovereignty in the Land of Israel" (Times of Israel, 14 August 2025). When the plan got final approval he said the "Palestinian state is being erased from the table not by slogans but by deeds" (Times of Israel). As one Reddit thread summarized his remarks, he said it would thwart a Palestinian state "because there is nothing to recognise and no one to recognize" (r/EndlessWar, 14 August 2025).

When European governments objected, Israel's Foreign Ministry answered: "Israel utterly rejects the statement of the foreign ministers regarding the approval of a construction plan near Jerusalem, its eternal capital, and rejects the attempt to impose foreign dictates upon it," adding, "The historic right of Jews to live anywhere in the Land of Israel – the birthplace of the Jewish people – is indisputable" (X trending summary, August 2025). Note the claim: not a right to live in Israel, but "anywhere in the Land of Israel."

The tenders keep coming​

  • August 2026: Israel invited bids for "more than 1,200 homes in a settlement project critics say would divide the West Bank" (OSINTreport on X, 21 August 2026). Al Jazeera English reported the same month on "Israeli plans to build a major new illegal settlement that would cleave the occupied West Bank in two" (repost of @AJEnglish, 21 August 2026).
  • September 2026: "Israel has announced a new tender for the construction of 2,167 housing units as part of its plan to expand the 'E1' settlement" (@RomaissaTahar on X, 18 September 2026; the post's status link was not captured).
  • An Israeli Foreign Ministry staff account, as reported by Ynet and summarized by the Israeli historian Shaiel Ben-Ephraim, listed the E1 plan, "~1,200 housing units between Jerusalem and Ma'ale Adumim," among the events that were "a nail in the coffin of Israeli legitimacy in Judea and Samaria" (Shaiel Ben-Ephraim on X, 25 August 2026).
  • More than 400 former European ministers, ambassadors, and officials signed an open letter urging EU leaders to "act now" against what they called Israel's "illegal annexation" through E1 (Chitter tag page, September 2026).

"Greater Jerusalem": the new name for the old map​

Amit Segal, chief political analyst of Israel's Channel 12, explained the strategy in February 2026, writing as someone sympathetic to it. "For the first time in almost 60 years, Jerusalem's borders are expanding." He described a housing plan "to create a contiguous strip from the Jerusalem neighborhood of Pisgat Ze'ev to the bordering settlement of Adam." Jerusalem, he notes, was treated differently from the rest of the land taken in 1967: "it was annexed immediately—literally within three weeks." And then the key sentence: "Smotrich knows that Israelis will fight for Jerusalem more fiercely than for any settlement bloc; hence his solution: tie them together." The Gush Etzion bloc is 14 kilometers away; Ma'ale Adumim, eight.

Segal closes: "Greater Israel is a fantasy Israel's right largely gave up on years ago... But the dream of Greater Jerusalem is alive and well" (Amit Segal on X, 16 February 2026). Set that beside what he just described — a capital stretched outward to swallow settlement blocs, 69 new settlements, 150 farms, and E1 — and the meaning is plain. The land is being taken; only the label has changed.

Netanyahu said the same about the city at the City of David excavation in September 2025: "This is our city. It is forever our city. It will never be divided again and there will be no Palestinian State" (American Rhetoric transcript, 15 September 2025). The historian Zachary Foster documented the pattern inside the city years earlier: approvals for new construction in Jewish neighborhoods such as Har Homa, Givat Hamatos, Givat Hashaked, and a new settlement at the Atarot airport, while planning for a Palestinian neighborhood, Tel Adaseh, was dropped (Zachary Foster on X, 19 April 2023, citing Haaretz).

Evidence rating: that the government built E1 to prevent a Palestinian state, in the finance minister's own words: CONFIRMED.

Status: Daniel Seidemann, Bezalel Smotrich, Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Segal, Shaiel Ben-Ephraim, and Zachary Foster are alive. Nothing on this page states that any of them committed a crime.

Sources​

Last Updated: 2026-09-26

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