Smotrich announces tenders for 3,401 housing units in long-frozen E1 settlement project: ‘Burying the idea of a Palestinian state’
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# PROPHECY UPDATE
PROPHECY RELATED NEWS AND COMMENTARY
## Wednesday, August 13, 2025
### Smotrich announces tenders for 3,401 housing units in long-frozen E1 settlement project: ‘Burying the idea of a Palestinian state’
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**Smotrich announces tenders for 3,401 housing units in long-frozen E1 settlement project: ‘Burying the idea of a Palestinian state’**
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Far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich announces that he plans to approve tenders to build more than 3,000 housing units in the highly controversial E1 settlement project between Jerusalem and Ma’ale Adumim in the West Bank, saying the move “buries the idea of a Palestinian state.”
The project has been frozen for decades amid fierce opposition from the international community, who fear the new settlement neighborhood would block a contiguous, viable Palestinian state.
“Approval of construction plans in E1 buries the idea of a Palestinian state and continues the many steps we are taking on the ground as part of the de facto sovereignty plan that we began implementing with the establishment of the government,” Smotrich says in a statement.
“After decades of international pressure and freezes, we are breaking conventions and connecting Ma’ale Adumim to Jerusalem. This is Zionism at its best – building, settling and strengthening our sovereignty in the Land of Israel,” says Smotrich who is also a minister in the Defense Ministry responsible for the West Bank civilian issues.
The potential construction of a new neighborhood for the Ma’ale Adumim settlement in the so-called E1 zone has long been cause for alarm in the international community. It would divide the West Bank into northern and southern regions and prevent the development of a Palestinian metropolis that connects East Jerusalem to Bethlehem and Ramallah, which the Palestinians have long hoped would serve as the foundation of their future state.
However, according to the Peace Now settlement watchdog, the