Netanyahu signs E1 plan to bisect West Bank as Israeli forces raid its cities

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu signed off the highly controversial E1 plan allowing for a massive expansion of settlements in the occupied West Bank on Thursday, local media reported.

“We said that there would not be a Palestinian state - and indeed, there will not be a Palestinian state,” Netanyahu said at a ceremony in the Israeli settlement of Maale Adumim.

The E1 plan, a decades-old project approved by the Israeli Civil Administration last month, will permit the building of over 3,400 new settler units in an area that aims to connect existing settlements in Maale Adumim in the occupied West Bank with occupied East Jerusalem.

In August, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich announced he would proceed with the plan, which he described as “Zionism at its best - building, settling and strengthening our sovereignty in the Land of Israel”.

His announcement drew condemnation, with United Nations chief Antonio Guterres saying the settlement would effectively cleave the West Bank in two and pose an "existential threat" to a contiguous Palestinian state.

The expansion will isolate occupied East Jerusalem and cut off Bethlehem and Ramallah in the West Bank from one another, fragmenting and separating Palestinian cities into what have been compared to “Bantustans”, the Black-only ghettos in apartheid South Africa.

Netanyahu’s greenlight comes as the governments of France, the UK, Canada, and Australia have all indicated interest in recognising a sovereign Palestinian state. The E1 plan, designed in the late 1990s, had been stalled so far due to international opposition. 

The construction of settlements by an occupying power is illegal under international law.

Upsurge in raids and detentions

The Israeli government’s settlement expansion plan occurs alongside the military’s sustained campaign of raids and mass detention on West Bank cities and refugee camps. 

Operations doubled down this week following a deadly shooting in Jerusalem on Monday that left six Israelis dead.

Israeli authorities vowed retaliation and applied sweeping punitive measures on Palestinian localities after the shooting, with troops surrounding towns, detaining residents and imposing strict lockdowns.

Israeli forces launch West Bank raids, seal off towns after Jerusalem attack

Read More »

On Thursday, Israeli forces blockaded Tulkarm, arresting dozens of Palestinians in the city, according to Quds News Network.

Local journalists shared videos of Israeli soldiers raiding buildings in Tulkarm and forcing residents to march in lines towards a nearby military checkpoint. 

According to Al Jazeera, over 100 Palestinians were detained in Tulkarm on Thursday. 

According to the Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs and the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society, over 19,000 Palestinians have been detained in the West Bank in the past two years, marking a clear escalation since the start of Israel's genocidal war on Gaza in October 2023.

Around 700,000 Israeli settlers live in roughly 300 illegal settlements across the West Bank and East Jerusalem, all of which have been built since Israel seized the territories in the 1967 Middle East war.

In addition to an ongoing increase in settlement expansion in the West Bank, human rights organisations have extensively documented the role of the Israeli government in arming settlers and responding with impunity to rising settler attacks against Palestinian communities.