As the world recognizes a Palestinian state, Israel’s E1 plan moves to bury it
The long-frozen settlement project would sever East Jerusalem from the West Bank, fragment Palestinian communities, and advance permanent annexation.
On the scorched hills to the east of Jerusalem, the Israeli settlement of Ma’ale Adumim spreads outward, casting a long shadow over the bustling Palestinian town of Ezariyah. These are the hills where Israel is set to break ground on its E1 settlement bloc, carving the West Bank in two in a bid to erase the possibility of a Palestinian state once and for all.
If realized, the Israeli plan to build 3,400 new settlement homes — which was given final government approval in August, after being stalled for decades in the face of international pushback — would physically cut off East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank, fragmenting Palestinian communities and making the idea of a contiguous state nearly impossible.
“The Palestinian state is being erased from the table not by slogans but by deeds,” proclaimed Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who advanced the project, after its approval. And yesterday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu added his official signature to the plan at a symbolic ceremony inside Ma’ale Adumim. “We are going to fulfill our promise that there will be no Palestinian state; this place belongs to us,” he declared.
Last week, Smotrich went further, unveiling a plan to annex 82 percent of the West Bank into Israel that would leave only six fragmented Palestinian population centers — Ramallah, Nablus, Jenin, Tulkarem, Jericho, and Hebron — as isolated bantustans. “Preventing a Palestinian state is an Israeli consensus,” read a statement attached to a map of the plan, which was emblazoned with the Israeli Defense Ministry logo.
Smotrich has framed the decision to move forward with construction in E1 as retaliation to the recent announcements by Western states, among them Australia, Canada, and France, that they plan to recognize Palestine at the United Nations General Assembly meeting in September. The United Kingdom has said it will do so conditionally, if Israel fails to meet criteria that include agreeing to a ceasefire in Gaza.
But for many Palestinians, including Omar Abu Zuhour, who owns three kiosks at the entrance to Ezariyah, this wave of official recognition means nothing. His kiosks, like many other businesses and homes near the town’s entrance, are now facing demolition to clear the way for a new road Israel is set to build as part of the E1 plan.
The entrance to the town of Ezariyah, where many Palestinian businesses received demolition orders due to the advancement of Israel’s E1 settlement project, in the occupied West Bank, August 21, 2025. (Oren Ziv)
Officially called the “Fabric of Life Road,” or “Sovereignty Road,” the project will establish separate roads for Israelis and Palestinians. It will allow Israel to seal off a large area in the heart of the West Bank from Palestinian access, divert Palestinian traffic away from Route 1 onto a bypass, and facilitate the annexation of the Ma’ale Adumim area.
Abu Zuhour, who moved to Ezariyah from Jenin after the start of Israel’s war on Gaza, is now considering where to go next once the eviction orders for his kiosks go into effect. “I left Jenin because the situation was unbearable, especially the endless waiting at the checkpoints, and the economic collapse. Now I will have to look for another place — maybe again in Jenin, Jericho, Anata, or Shuafat refugee camp.
“The West Bank is almost finished,” he added. “They talk about a Palestinian state, but where? Settlements have almost taken over the Jordan Valley; they will soon reach Hebron in the south. There are no [areas] left to negotiate over.”
7,000 Palestinians facing forced displacement
Across the West Bank, annexation is no longer just a looming threat but an unfolding reality of permanent Israeli control. Nearly 900 metal gates and military checkpoints restrict Palestinians from reaching family, friends, and even urgent medical care.New Israeli settlements and outposts are being established and existing ones continue to expand at an alarming pace, increasingly in Palestinian-controlled Area B. And settler violence runs rampant, with the already blurred line between settlers and soldiers now virtually erased.
Palestinians tune in to radio updates about checkpoints several times a day, planning every journey accordingly. A trip from Nablus to Hebron or Ezariyah to Ramallah becomes an ordeal of delays, humiliations, and arbitrary barriers. Many now fear long drives altogether, as army raids have become near-constant.
The separation barrier between the town of Ezariyah and East Jerusalem, August 21, 2025. (Oren Ziv)
Once E1 is built, these journeys could grow even longer, making north-south travel almost impossible. Segregated roads and military checkpoints already serve as daily reminders that Palestinian freedom and dignity are constrained long before any discussion of statehood can begin.
Meanwhile, East Jerusalem, long envisioned as the capital of a future Palestinian state, is physically and administratively divided from the rest of the West Bank, hemmed in by settlements, checkpoints, and Israeli municipal control. The E1 project would sever it still further, isolating the city from nearby towns such as Ezariyah, where many residents go daily for shopping and essential needs.
“Ezariyah would become a geographically isolated island,” warned Mohammad Mattar, a member of the town’s municipality. “The road will cut right against people’s homes, leaving no room for natural expansion, and the town will lose thousands of dunams of land. This will force many residents to leave and deal a devastating economic blow.”
Mattar said that 112 demolition orders have been issued for “shops, industrial facilities, Bedouin homes, factories, garages, and farmland lying along the route of the new road. Some businesses have already evacuated and cut their losses, while others are waiting.” If the plan is advanced, he noted, “it will force many residents to leave, particularly Jerusalemites who have built their lives and livelihoods around the town.”
In Jabal Al-Baba, a Bedouin community adjacent to Ezariyah, barefoot children play on a makeshift swing near a hill overlooking Ma’ale Adumim. An impending sense of doom hangs in the air.
Palestinian children from the Bedouin community of Jabal al-Baba play on a hill overlooking the E1 area, in the occupied West Bank, August 21, 2025. (Oren Ziv)
The settlements and the so-called Sovereignty Road planned as part of the E1 project would sever Jabal Al-Baba and the neighboring Wadi Jamal community from Ezariyah, cutting residents off from schools, health care, and essential services. According to the Jerusalem Governorate of the Palestinian Authority (PA), nearly 7,000 Palestinians across 22 Bedouin communities face the threat of forced displacement if E1 goes forward.
Entire Bedouin communities “will be forcibly displaced and move into towns,” Mattar warned. Those who rely on livestock for their livelihoods, he explained, “would lose their sources of income after being displaced, turning them into an economic and social burden, with rising unemployment and few opportunities for work.”
“We are facing an extremist government, our fate is uncertain, and we don’t know what to expect from the future,” said Atallah Jahaleen, head of Jabal Al-Baba. His community of 80 families — originally from the Tel ‘Arad area in the Naqab/Negev desert from which they were expelled by Israel in 1948 — has no intention of leaving again. “We cannot risk reliving the experience of displacement,” he affirmed.
Performative diplomacy
Against this backdrop of accelerated annexation efforts, the PA has hailed the wave of diplomatic recognition as progress toward statehood. In August, Palestinian Foreign Minister Varsen Aghabekian Shahin told reporters in a press briefing that eight countries have confirmed plans to recognize Palestine, while 10 others remain hesitant. She insisted that international recognition can help “protect the two-state solution and thwart Israeli plans aimed at undermining the possibility of a Palestinian state on the ground.”
“Israel wants us to say there is no viability of two states,” Shahin noted. “What we are saying, first of all, is that there needs to be recognition of our rights. After that, based on the 1967 borders, there might be discussions between the independent State of Palestine and Israel about possible border modifications. But nothing of that sort can happen without recognition of the independence and sovereignty of the State of Palestine.”
The West Bank settlement of Ma’ale Adumim, which Israel seeks to effectively annex with the E1 plan, December 9, 2012. (Lior Mizrahi/Flash90)
But while diplomats and politicians hail these gestures as milestones for Palestinian statehood, many analysts warn that the recognition is largely symbolic.
Inès Abdel Razek, executive director of the Palestine Institute for Public Diplomacy, calls it “performative diplomacy”: a way for governments to show they are doing something in the face of ongoing violence without confronting Israel or taking the concrete steps required under international law.
“The most we can say about the fact that governments choose recognition as a measure right now, in the midst of a genocide that needs to end, is that it is really too little, too late,” she told +972. “What governments should be doing, not only as a moral obligation, but as a political and legal obligation under international law, is to end the genocide and the occupation, and to hold Israel accountable.
“What they effectively do is contradictory to that: You’re recognizing the Palestinian state, but at the same time, your actions are aiding and abetting the very system that is destroying that potential state,” she continued. “So this is pure hypocrisy.”
Recognition, Abdel Razek argues, has done none of this. Even with 147 of the UN’s 193 member states recognizing Palestine, Israeli settlements continue to expand, Gaza is being annihilated, and East Jerusalem is increasingly cut off from the rest of the West Bank. Moreover, recognition further empowers a PA that wields little real power and, with no elections in nearly 20 years, little legitimacy — while the population remains under de-facto Israeli control.
“For the PA, recognition is a victory. But if you look on the ground, there is little resembling a Palestinian state,” she said. “What does exist are Palestinians themselves, fighting to remain on their land and to see their fundamental right to self-determination fulfilled.”
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas at the opening session of the Palestinian Central Council, in the West Bank city of Ramallah, April 23, 2025. (Flash90)
For many Palestinians, Abdel Razek explained, the idea of statehood itself is increasingly irrelevant. “When we ask people whether they want one state, two states, or any state at all, the average person answers that they just want a job in Palestine, not in a settlement,” she said.
“They want the dignity of working in a thriving Palestinian economy, in Palestinian businesses and industries, rather than be exploited as cheap labor across the Green Line,” she added. “They care about freedom of movement: to travel from Nablus to Hebron in 45 minutes instead of three hours, without multiple checkpoints and humiliations. The pursuit of statehood does not deliver freedom or liberation from these layers of oppression.”
‘Would a Palestinian state exist in the air?’
This belief in the primacy of self-determination over statehood is borne out in public opinion polling among Palestinians. “In Gaza, more than 50 percent would accept a two-state or a one-state solution,” explained Zayne Abu Daqqa, co-founder and senior fellow at the Institute for Social and Economic Progress (ISEP). “It is almost like people are saying, I do not care what happens, I just want this to end.
“In the West Bank,” he continued, “the luxury of choice exists to a degree, but support for statehood does not translate into enthusiasm for political compromise.” According to the latest ISEP poll conducted in the West Bank in May 2025, although support for one state with equal rights for Palestinians and Jews is growing, support for a two-state solution remains much stronger, with 72.6 percent backing the establishment of a Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital — a clear rise compared to earlier in the war.
“Before the war, support for the two-state solution was at an all-time low,” Abu Daqqa said. “Support for any political process was also at an all-time low. There was basically a fatigue with the political process that had been ongoing for 30 years with no results. But with the start of the war, as people saw the immense destruction, we actually started seeing a shift. Fewer and fewer Palestinians today are willing to live alongside Israeli Jews.”
Abu Daqqa insists that despite these numbers, Palestinians do not “love” the two-state solution or see it as realistic, in light of Israel’s actions. “A two-state solution means we compromise most of our historical homeland. I also think most of the population is not delusional — they understand exactly the parameters that they live in and they can see this whole boat crashing. I do think though that what Palestinians essentially want is self-determination. It’s very simple.”
At the same time, Abu Daqqa argues that Palestinians’ primary concerns are far more immediate. “Right now, what people fear most is for their security — that’s the first priority. The second is livelihood. These come before anything else,” he said. “National liberation is a luxury. If you’re hungry, or if you fear someone might attack you on the street, it’s hard to dream.”
Indeed, for Israa Al Areer, a 35-year-old mother of four from Gaza City, questions about statehood are the last thing on her mind. She is focused solely on surviving the war with her children and finding shelter in southern Gaza, after her husband was killed in an Israeli airstrike on their home in October 2023. “Recognizing Palestinian statehood amid displacement, killing, extermination, and famine? There is no place in our lives for such a declaration right now,” she told +972. “I have no shelter, no money, and not enough food. How can I even think about a state?
“If a Palestinian state were recognized now, would it exist in the air? Without land or people? The Israeli government is destroying everything in its path,” she added. “Our president [Mahmoud Abbas] and the world should first protect the people and stop this war at any cost. Only after that should we think about anything like a state.”
Ibtisam Mahdi contributed to this report.