Palestinians, UK condemn Israel’s ‘destructive’ E1 settlement plan

The Palestinian Authority (PA) and the United Kingdom have condemned an Israeli decision to issue a tender for more than 1,200 new housing units in the occupied West Bank under Israel’s E1 settlement project.

The Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission (CRRC), a PA government body affiliated with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), warned in a statement on Tuesday that advancing the plans would lead to confining Palestinians in the occupied West Bank to “disconnected enclaves surrounded by settlements”.

Israel’s E1 plan, approved by the government last year, aims to build more than 3,400 housing units on roughly 12sq km (4.6sq miles) of Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank.

Israeli settlements and outposts are illegal under international law.

The plan would link thousands of settlements in occupied East Jerusalem, which Israel has already illegally annexed, to the Maale Adumim settlement bloc in the West Bank.

This would fully sever East Jerusalem, which Palestinians have long wanted as the capital of their future state, from the West Bank. It would also essentially bisect the West Bank.

UK Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband called the move an “unacceptable and destructive act” that could undermine the prospect of a Palestinian state.

Miliband said he had told Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar that Israel must immediately halt the plans, withdraw the tender, and stop all settlement expansion. The Israeli charge d’affaires was also summoned to the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, where the UK demanded an immediate reversal.

The UK would soon set out measures to respond to Israeli government policies, Miliband said, including sanctions against those involved in illegal settlement expansion. “Britain will not stand back and accept the destruction of the two-state solution,” he said.

The submission of bids for the E1 project is due to close on October 19. That is just before elections are scheduled in Israel on October 27, in which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government are expected to see falling support.

Al Jazeera’s Nida Ibrahim, reporting from Hizma in the occupied West Bank, said if the E1 project were to be realised, it would be the “last nail in the coffin” of the two-state solution in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“The E1 project has been already delayed several times by the Israeli government, but now we see it happening on the ground.”

The “ultimate goal for the Israelis is to get Palestinians to leave”, she said.

Israel’s Ministry of Construction and Housing approved the start of the bidding process for 1,234 housing units on Tuesday. The tender covers one of two construction plans approved for E1, according to the Israeli rights organisation Ir Amim and peace advocacy group Peace Now.

In a news release on Tuesday, Ir Amim said that even a “partial implementation would create irreversible facts on the ground, fundamentally altering the geographic and strategic character of the area – severing the northern West Bank from the south and isolating East Jerusalem”.

In a statement on X that referred to Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, himself a settler in the West Bank, Peace Now accused the “Netanyahu-Smotrich government” of “trying to bury the two-state solution” through this settlement project.

“In the midst of an election campaign, the government is trying to turn the annexation vision of the pro-settlement right into reality and to tie the hands of the next government. The move is also being carried out in violation of an explicit commitment by the state,” Peace Now said.

“The price is not only diplomatic. Implementing E1 and closing the area to Palestinians threatens to disconnect dozens of Bedouin communities, including Khan al-Ahmar, and to lead to their expulsion from their land.”