ISRAEL’S approval of the E1 settlement scheme in the occupied West Bank has provoked condemnation from more than 20 countries, including several members of the European Union.
On Thursday, the foreign ministers of 21 nations and the EU released a joint statement demanding that Israel immediately cancel the plan.
They described the Israeli Higher Planning Committee’s decision to permit construction in the E1 zone, east of al-Quds (Jerusalem), as ‘unacceptable’ and a flagrant breach of international law.
The statement was endorsed by ministers from Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and the UK.
The ministers stressed that the project serves no legitimate benefit for Israelis and will only fuel further bloodshed and instability.
They urged Israel to halt all settlement activity in line with UN Security Council Resolution 2334, warning that the decision threatens regional security and pushes any possibility of peace further out of reach. ‘Israel still has an opportunity to stop the E1 plan.
‘We encourage them to urgently retract it,’ the joint statement read, noting that unilateral actions by Israel undermine all collective aspirations for security and prosperity in the region.
The E1 project involves 3,400 illegal settlement units on occupied Palestinian land near the existing Maale Adumim settlement.
It also includes 342 units in a new colony at Asael in the southern West Bank. Israeli finance minister Bezalel Smotrich openly stated the plan aims at ‘erasing’ any chance of a Palestinian state.
The UN has repeatedly affirmed that all Israeli settlements in occupied territory violate international law. The E1 approval, issued on Wednesday, covers a 12-square-kilometre area east of occupied al-Quds (Jerusalem). ‘Breaking the Silence’, an Israeli human rights organisation, denounced the project as a land grab that ‘will not only further fragment the Palestinian territory, but will further entrench apartheid.’
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected the establishment of a Palestinian state and insists on indefinite Israeli control over the occupied West Bank, annexed East al-Quds (Jerusalem) and Gaza.
According to Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth, the settlement subcommittee also advanced plans on Wednesday to construct another 342 units in Asael between east and west Mount al-Khalil.
On 8 August, Israel’s war cabinet endorsed a military plan to seize Gaza City and further tighten its stranglehold on the besieged enclave, which has faced relentless bombardment since Israel’s genocidal war began on 7 October 2023.
In the last 22 months, more than 62,122 Palestinians have been killed and 156,758 injured, most of them women and children.