As the ongoing genocide in Gaza dramatically accelerates, marked by preparations for the total occupation of the Strip, the colonial offensive in the West Bank is also intensifying. Last Thursday, Defense Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who is also responsible for the settlement of the West Bank, announced with great fanfare the imminent approval of a vast construction project attached to Ma’aleh Adumim settlement east of Jerusalem called the E1 Development Area. Conceived more than twenty years ago under Yitzhak Rabin, the project had been blocked by Israel’s main allies, who deemed it too explosive within the framework of international imperialist support for a supposed “two-state solution.”
The new construction project marks a major escalation in Israel’s stranglehold on the West Bank, for several reasons. First, the proposed construction of more than 3,400 additional settler housing units would cut the West Bank in two at its narrowest point, between Jerusalem and the Dead Sea, along an east-west axis already entirely within Israeli-controlled territory. Second, it would disrupt the continuity between Ramallah and Bethlehem, two of the West Bank’s main Palestinian urban centers. Finally, it would further isolate East Jerusalem, envisioned as the future capital of a Palestinian state, from the rest of the West Bank.
The resumption of this project is a direct and deliberate response to the announcement by several of Israel’s allies — including France, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada — to recognize a Palestinian state at the UN General Assembly in September. By fragmenting the West Bank more than ever and isolating East Jerusalem, these new settlements will make the formation of a Palestinian state on the basis advocated by the imperialist powers, namely the famous “two-state solution,” completely impossible.
In fact, Smotrich made it clear that this was indeed the explicit purpose of the new settlements, denying in passing the very existence of a Palestinian people: “This reality is what will definitively bury the idea of a Palestinian state, because there is nothing to recognize and no one to recognize.” Smotrich then went on to directly threaten those international powers, many of whom have been complicit in the genocide, who might still support a two state solution, saying: “Today, anyone in the world who tries to recognize a Palestinian state will receive a response from us on the ground.”
Donald Trump’s return to power and his genocidal proposals for Gaza have paved the way for such a project to come to fruition. Even more than during his first term, the US president has pushed the boundaries of support for Israeli colonial ambitions. In an Interview by Reuters, a State Department spokesperson stated tersely that “a stable West Bank guarantees Israel’s security and is consistent with this administration’s goal of achieving peace in the region,” before referring the press to the Israeli government for further information.
Far from bringing peace to Palestinians, this project will further exacerbate their daily suffering and humiliation, as they endure constant attacks from Israeli settlers, police forces, and the army. In fact, there have already been more than 750 settler attacks in the West Bank since the beginning of the year, according to the UN OCHA. Meanwhile, the construction of these new settlements will make it virtually impossible for Palestinians to move between the south, north, and East of Jerusalem, due to the construction of new walls, barbed wire fences, and difficult-to-cross checkpoints. The cynical solution to this problem put forward by Israel consists of a narrow road supposedly linking the north and south, saturated with checkpoints and lined with settlements, exposing Palestinians who use it to the constant risk of attack.
The bill is expected to be fully approved on Wednesday, with no real opposition in sight, as it allows Netanyahu and the Likud to consolidate their electoral base as the party moves ever closer to the religious Zionist positions defended by Smotrich. But above all, the approval of these new settlements is meant as a provocation to Israel’s allies who are preparing to recognize the Palestinian state in September — a purely symbolic gesture that is mainly intended to give Israel time to continue its massacres while attempting to contain the mobilizations of solidarity with Gaza.
The resumption of this new settlement project is designed to contribute to the continuation and reinforcement of the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, including the West Bank, which is already one of the most fragmented territories in the world. Palestinians survive there in islands surrounded by settlements, military bases, bypass roads reserved for settlers, checkpoints, and the entire Israeli apparatus of repression. Meanwhile the bureaucratized and corrupt Palestinian Authority continues to actively collaborate with Israel, while multiplying essentially symbolic gestures in its press releases or its approaches to international institutions, which for decades have demonstrated their total inability to prevent Israel from pursuing its policy of colonization and, ultimately, the complete conquest of the Palestinian territories.
It is equally illusory to expect anything from international actors who, for decades, have allowed and participated in the ethnic cleansing of Palestine: from the imperialist states complicit in the genocide in Gaza and the international institutions which, with the exception of a few progressive resolutions that have remained ineffective, have essentially ratified the advances in the colonization of Palestine, to the Arab states of the region, which are doing everything to contain the mobilizations and to maintain their economic relations with the colonial state. Only the mobilization of the Palestinian and Arab masses of the region, as well as that of the populations of the imperialist countries, independently of the regional bourgeoisies and their complicit governments, can provide a response that is adequate.
Originally published in French on August 18, in Permanent Revolution.
Translated and revised by James Dennis Hoff