Maale Adumim, the West Bank-The Strip of Sand and Brush with Solar Abdition does not seem much, but if you narrowed their eyes, you can almost glimpse the dream landscape of a future Palestinian capital.
“These spare lands mean that we can build our Parliament, we can build our future institutions,” said Khalil Toufakji, a Palestinian expert in geography and expansion of settlements, A NBC News earlier this month while brewing in the controversial “East 1” or E1, section of the Oeste Occupy Bank.
“If Israel is built here, it means that everything is finished at the same time”, the 76 -year expert in Israeli settlements saying in a walking through the Israeli settlement of Maale Adumim. “This means that Jerusalem is surrounded from everywhere … it means that there is no Palestinian geographical continuity between the north and south.”
The almost 5 square miles of land may seem undesirable and the conflict around them theoretical, but both Israel and the Palestinians consider the destination of the area with the same sense of urgency.
Then, when the Israeli authorities approved the development of 3,400 homes last week, ultra -nationalist legislators celebrated what they saw as the death of a nascent Palestinian state and an acceleration of plans for Israel to annex the entire West Bank.
The development “practically erases the illusion of two states and consolidates the control of the Jewish people in the heart of the land of Israel,” said Bezalel Smotrich, the Minister of Finance of the extreme right of Israel, to a press conference when he announced his approval of the plans.
“Now they declare it clearly and do not need to hide it,” said Shawan Jabarin, general director of AL-HAQ, a Palestinian Human Rights organization based in the West Bank. “They do not need philosophers and intellectuals to analyze. They talk about it themselves:” This is to kill any possibility of a Palestinian state. “
Since the plan was presented in the early 1990s, Israeli authorities and Jewish settlers such as Smotrich have exposed the practical needs of a new development as Jerusalem has become too full and environmental regulations have banned a new construction in the west of the city, which mainly belongs to Israel.
But the Palestinians say that the area, which extends to Horcajadas in the huge Jewish settlement as and the Palestinian majority of East Jerusalem, is the only unvotable land that could house government buildings for a new state.
The construction would also divide Bank in two, fracturing again an incipient Palestinian state already divided between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, where almost 63,000 people have been killed since October 7, 2023, according to the Ministry of Health of the Enclave. Israel launched its military campaign after the terrorist attacks led by Hamas that day, which killed 1,200 people and saw around 250 hostages.
After almost 23 months of war, the country has faced increasing critications about its behavior of traditional Western allies such as the United Kingdom, France and Canada, who have recently made conditional offers to recognize a Palestinian state, unless Israel revives conversations to achieve that and accepts a high fire in Gaza.
Those countries were among the 21 years that criticized development plans E1 as a “violation of international law” in a statement on Friday. “We condemn this decision and ask for your immediate reversal in the strongest terms,” he said. British Foreign Minister David Lammy also called Tzipi Hotovely, Israel’s ambassador to the United Kingdom to raise his objections.
But the recognition of a Palestinian State is seen by some Israeli politicians as Hamas gratifying, which leads them to see the proposals E1 as a deliberate side against long -standing allies whose statements are increasingly moving away from their country.
“In the eyes of the right wing of Israeli policy, this is a diplomatic setback,” said David Weinberg, a member of the Institute of National Security and Zionist Strategy. “But it is the diplomatic setback that is already in addition to what for a long time have been more outstanding reasons, good reasons, for Israel who wants to build in E1.”
But for the Israeli right, the resounding triumph of President Donald Trump’s return to the White House has drowned such protests.
“The E1 plan began three decades ago and was always blocked due to American pressure,” said Lior Amihai, executive director of Peace Now, an Israeli defense organization. “Now under Trump, they are approving it. So certainly the lack of American resistance … allowed the Israeli government to approve it.”
The White House did not return a request for comments from NBC News on development E1.
When the position returns, Trump raised the sanctions of the age of Biden to the Israeli settlers who had been involved in repeated violence against the Palestinians in the West Bank.
In his first term, he transferred the United States embassy to Jerusalem and recognized the entire city as the capital of Israel. Most countries consider that Jerusalem is an occupied territory and do not recognize Israeli sovereignty. Israel, who captured East Jerusalem, including the old city, of Jordan in the Middle Eastern War of 1967, considers it its eternal and indivisible capital.
So far this year, Israel has approved 25,000 liquidation housing units in the West Bank, said Amihai, far exceeding the record of 12,000 units throughout 2020, a massive increase in AMIHAI accredited in part to Trump because their administration had created “an environment where it is easier for this government”, “they do not have to hide anything, they can say that vocally vocally.
Additional units will accommodate the flourishing growth of the 700,000 settlers that the estimates of the United Nations already live in the West Bank in widely considered illegal settlements according to international law.
Even when the E1 plan collapsed through decades of bureaucratic and diplomatic obstacles, Israeli officials prepared the earth, some of their compatriots refer to as Judea and Samaria, using the biblical term, with a clear intention to develop it.
The headquarters of the Police District of Samaria and Judea moved there in 2008. The roads and other road works that connect the infrastructure of Jerusalem and Maale Adumim have also settled in the same land largely uninhabited.
Once the house is finished, Palestinian observers say the area will close to their community. Even those who simply drive from the Palestinian provisional capital of Ramallah to the city of Bethlehem South of Bethlehem will probably have to look for longer routes, they say.
Such deviations should not prevent more agreements between Palestinians and Israelis, said Weinberg, even when he dismissed the notion of a Palestinian state in current circumstances.
“Instead of mistreating Israel, the West should advance in realistic space savings arrangements for Judea and Sumeria,” he said. “Israel’s need to build on E1 does not need to be a bar for an agreement with a serious Palestinian government.”
However, the Israeli right wing has announced its intentions, said Jabarin. Such a sudden and exhausting assault on Palestinian status, particularly with US blessings, will require rhetoric rather than diplomatic rhetoric to revert.
“The writing there, the convictions here, makes no change,” he said. “He won’t push Israel in any way.”
