According to the TRTworld, standing before supporters on Thursday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu doubled down on one of his most controversial promises.
“We are going to fulfil our promise that there will be no Palestinian state, this place belongs to us,” he declared, as cameras rolled. “We will safeguard our heritage, our land and our security… We are going to double the city’s population.”
The words, delivered at the signing ceremony for the long-delayed E1 settlement project, landed like a hammer blow for Palestinians who still cling to the hope of an independent state. For them, the E1 corridor is not just land, it is the geographic lifeline that links their communities in the north and south of the West Bank. If built, the project would cut that link, leaving the dream of statehood in fragments.
Israel has pushed to expand Maale Adumim for decades, but international opposition repeatedly put the plan on hold. Now, with Netanyahu’s government more firmly in the grip of far-right allies, the project is back on the table. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, one of its staunchest supporters, has already greenlit 3,400 housing units in the sensitive zone.
The backlash was swift. Palestinians denounced the move as the death knell of the two-state solution. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned the plan poses an “existential threat” to peace, while rights groups accused Israel of entrenching apartheid-like control.
Yet for Netanyahu and his supporters, Thursday’s ceremony was a celebration, a symbolic reclaiming of land they see as their own. For Palestinians, it was a stark reminder of how far the horizon of freedom keeps slipping away.
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