Israel’s government dusts off the 30-year-old E-1 plan to expand Jerusalem eastward — and Europe isn’t happy

Photo: Flash90

Israel’s decision to shake the cobwebs off a controversial 30-year-old plan to connect the suburban city of Maaleh Adumim to Jerusalem will spark a test of wills at a time when momentum is growing to recognize a Palestinian state. Will the E1 plan finally come to fruition, or will the Israeli government blink again?

Burying the Two-State Solution?

The drive east from Jerusalem along Highway 1 toward the Dead Sea is breathtaking and filled with subtle seasonal changes. During the hot, dry summer, the steep hilltops are bare and grayish-brown, reminiscent of a moonscape. After the first winter rains, those same hilltops are covered in greenish brush, adding color to the scenery.

Bedouin tent villages dot the landscape, and young boys shepherd flocks of sheep and goats grazing on sparse vegetation. Camels stroll across the hillsides. The highway is so steep that drivers must stay in low gear, or risk burning out their brakes or getting a speeding ticket on the descents. One wrong turn and you could end up in an Arab village, as I once did, until two elderly Arab men spotted me and hurriedly pointed the way out.

The city of Maaleh Adumim lies along this highway, just four miles east of Jerusalem, at a key junction connecting the Jordan Valley and the Judean Desert. Mentioned in Sefer Yehoshua (15:7) when delineating the boundaries of the tribe of Yehuda, and resettled shortly after the Yom Kippur War, Maaleh Adumim’s 12,000 acres are home to over 40,000 Jews, religious and secular, and a small but growing chareidi community. One of its notable features is a pedestrian and bicycle trail that offers complete separation and safety from vehicular traffic.

Maaleh Adumim could have been even larger if Israel had carried out the E-1 (East-One) plan, first proposed by Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1994 to establish a continuous Jewish presence from Jerusalem to the Jordan River Valley.

Every subsequent prime minister endorsed E-1. Opposition from the international community, including every American president not named Trump, gave Israel cold feet.

Last week, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich took E-1 off the back burner, announcing that Israel would now “bury the two-state solution” and build more than 3,000 housing units in E-1, and when the project is complete, it will include industrial, commercial, hotel, and tourism facilities.

The reaction was swift and predictable. European nations, some of whom have financed illegal Palestinian construction near Maaleh Adumim, claim Israeli construction in E-1 is a breach of international law and would bury (their) hopes for a Palestinian state by blocking direct access between Ramallah, the seat of the Palestinian Authority’s government north of Jerusalem, and Bethlehem in the south.

Just before press time, Mike Huckabee, the US ambassador to Israel, told Galei Tzahal (Army Radio) that the US would not dictate how Israelis run their country or interfere in Israel’s internal matters. “It would be very strange to say that others can live in this area but Israelis cannot,” Huckabee said.

The Oslo Agreement designates the land between Jerusalem and Maaleh Adumim as Area C, where Israel has the right to zone, plan, and build. It is the Palestinians — aided and abetted by funding from the European Union and from UNWRA — who have been encroaching on E-1 and building illegally since at least 1989, five years before the Oslo Accords were signed.

Pawns in a Game

The Europeans might be in a tizzy over E-1, but Maaleh Adumim mayor Guy Yifrach is thrilled.

“I’m very excited — it’s been 20 years since we’ve built a new neighborhood in Maaleh Adumim, and this will allow our young people to remain in the city they were born in,” said Mayor Yifrach, who quipped that he changed the name from E-1 to T-1 on January 20, 2025, in honor of President Trump, on the day Trump took his oath of office.

The Ministry of Defense’s Civil Administration and legal advisor cleared the last bureaucratic obstacles by overruling objections filed by left-wing and Palestinian NGOs. Yifrach said the government must publish its decision to proceed and allow 15 more days for any technical objections, but barring that, by the end of August, the government can put the project out for bids from qualified building contractors.

Until then, he will avoid overconfidence.

“I’ve learned to be careful about making populist declarations,” the mayor said. “There is always the chance the government could delay it by saying we don’t want to fight with the world, but all the land is state-owned and they have checked carefully to ensure none of it is private Palestinian-owned land, or agricultural land.”

The government has done its due diligence, but Palestinians have created facts on the ground that can pose a physical obstacle to E-1.

The biggest one is a cluster known as Khan al-Ahmar, sparsely populated by members of the Bedouin Jahalin tribe.

Naomi Kahn, the director of the international division at Regavim, an Israeli NGO dedicated to protecting Israel’s territorial integrity by preventing the seizure of state land, says Regavim has fought six legal battles in Israel’s High Court to evict the Bedouin from E-1. She says the Palestinian Authority forcibly settled the Bedouin in Khan al-Ahmar in 2009, and installed water tanks, giving the area a facade of livability.

“They forced the Bedouin to stay in this very inhospitable area, which is really a drainage ditch of an existing Jewish community, and imported livestock and brought in feed to make it look like it’s a herding community,” Mrs. Kahn said.

The next fact on the ground was building a school, which attracted more residents. Even though the school building was illegal, Israel has to think twice about the public relations complications from knocking down a school building. Mrs. Kahn says the school has become a hotbed of anti-Israel and anti-Semitic propaganda.

Ultimately, the High Court ruled that Khan al-Ahmar was an illegal settlement, but ordered the Israeli government to relocate the residents. Some 80% of the Bedouin agreed to Israeli alternatives near Jericho and in the Abu Dis suburb in East Jerusalem, but the PA pressured the remaining 20% to hold out for a better deal.

“The PA coerced them into rejecting every possible compromise,” Mrs. Kahn said. “Khan al-Ahmar is now triple the size it was when it was first handed its demolition orders, and they keep getting more international support. They’re being used as pawns, and the approval of the E-1 plans does not include the land on which they’re standing, even though it belongs to the existing Jewish community of Kfar Adumim.”

Khan al-Ahmar is a geographic obstacle, but only the tip of the iceberg of a larger problem that involves Israel’s demography and security.

Chaim Silberstein, the founder and chairman of the Jerusalem Center for Applied Policy, which aims to ensure Jerusalem remains Israel’s undivided capital while strengthening its position in the global diplomatic landscape, says E-1 will give Israel greater strategic depth on its eastern front with Jordan, ensuring the Jordan River Valley remains part of Israel.

In addition, Israel has nowhere else to expand. Environmental concerns have quashed many major housing projects proposed for Jerusalem’s suburbs, including the 2007 Safdie plan that called for some 20,000 housing units in the area near Ramot and Har Nof, and more recently, a plan to build more than 5,000 housing units in the area known as the White Ridge, near the Jerusalem Zoo in the southwest.

With large Arab population centers to the north of Jerusalem in Ramallah and to the south in Beit Lechem, Israel is boxed in. “That’s why Jerusalem is going high-rise, and that has its limitations, too, so the only area to expand is east,” Silberstein says.

To Silberstein, the major advantage of E-1 is that it will “help to move the needle on the demographic problems” facing Israel in the area.

“Jerusalem is 40% Arab today, and we need to find a way to democratically and legally change that demographic balance,” Silberstein said. “Adding more than 4,000 residential units in that area [E-1] will help increase the Jewish presence in the Jerusalem metropolis.”

Silberstein said JCAP’s goal is not to suffice with E-1, but to expand the entire Jerusalem metropolitan area to include the Gush Etzion yishuvim south of Jerusalem. “E-1 is a very central part of this plan,” he said.

The Voice of Clarity

The Gemara may talk about how Jerusalem will expand at the end of days, but for now, the thought of a Greater Jerusalem sends chills down the spines of the spineless in the international community.

The Knesset’s vote at the end of July to apply Israeli sovereignty to Judea and Samaria was only declaratory, but with more Western countries openly declaring they will recognize a Palestinian state at next month’s UN General Assembly, the geopolitical stakes are getting higher. The Israeli government must decide whether to take the gamble that declaring sovereignty over Judea and Samaria will create its own facts on the ground that hammers the final nail into the coffin of the two-state solution, or whether it will backfire and result in international sanctions, or somewhere in between.

Many political observers were disappointed that the cabinet did not raise the sovereignty issue at its Sunday meeting, after 19 heads of the Yesha Regional Councils sent an urgent letter last Thursday to Prime Minister Netanyahu to present it. The topic did not arise, but Yisrael Ganz, chairman of the Yesha Council, was not perturbed.

“I’m not a guy who’s easily disappointed,” Ganz said. “I’m working hard to make changes.”

Ganz said it would have been too much to expect the cabinet to take this up on such short notice. On Sunday night, he met with Netanyahu at a ceremony marking the 50th anniversary of the founding of the yishuv of Ofra in the Binyamin region. Nineteen mayors of Yesha communities attended, including Beitar Illit’s Meir Rubenstein and Modiin Illit’s Mayor Yaakov Guterman, and they asked Bibi to bring sovereignty to a vote at next week’s cabinet meeting.

“I can promise you I will work hard until we finish the mission of applying the law here,” Ganz said. “It’s important for everyone in the State of Israel. It’s not an easy process.”

Ganz said Israel must be careful because, if the UN does declare a Palestinian state, it could potentially stop the IDF from making incursions into Palestinian territories, something it does day and night to fight terrorism.

Ganz, who has spent considerable time in the US meeting with Trump administration officials and members of Congress, and who also hosted House Speaker Mike Johnson on his recent visit to Yesha communities, said the ball is in Israel’s court.

“We make our demands to Prime Minister Netanyahu and our government,” Ganz said. “We have to make the decision. President Trump is waiting for a clear voice — an announcement from Prime Minister Netanyahu. When Israel makes that clear announcement, it will be accepted by the Trump administration.”

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1075)