The Civil Administration has advanced a major settler building project, known as E1, in a move that is likely to complicate Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s relations with both Washington and his left-wing coalition partners.
This also comes as US Deputy Assistant Secretary for Israel and Palestinian Affairs Hady Amr is visiting Israel and the Palestinian territories.
Former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had pushed forward the project, which involves the construction of 3,412 apartment units in an unbuilt area of the West Bank Ma’aleh Adumim settlement, known as E1.
The United States, the international community and the Palestinian Authority have objected to the plan, which they argue would prevent the contiguous development of a Palestinian state and render it unviable.
The E1 project was first proposed during the tenure of former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, but has been largely frozen over the last three decades.
Netanyahu allowed for the project to be deposited before the Civil Administration’s Higher Planning Council for Judea and Samaria in February 2020, a move which brought the bureaucratic planning process close to completion.
The left-wing NGOs Peace Now and Ir Amim filed an objection to the plan with the Civil Administration in August 2020. Both groups reported on Wednesday that a Civil Administration hearing date had been set for August 9.
MK Mossi Raz, whose Meretz Party is part of the coalition, immediately responded that the government “would not authorize building in E1.”
“This will never happen,” he said.
The objections had frozen the advancement of the project. Should the Civil Administration’s appeals process uphold the plan, the matter could then move forward to the Higher Planning Council. After that, government tenders would also have to be issued before construction could begin.
Peace Now appealed to the Defense Ministry to freeze the appeals process.
“The Bennett-Lapid government has glorified itself in turning a new page with the world and the citizens of Israel, but promoting the plan in E1 shows the opposite and will bring us back to the dangerous policies furthered by Netanyahu,” the NGO said.
“The defense minister can and must freeze this plan so that the Israeli interest is safeguarded and a wrong prevented,” Peace Now said.
News of the E1 hearing comes as tensions are already high between the United States and the Bennett government over the issue of Israeli demolitions of illegal Palestinian homes in the West Bank and its policy of demolishing the homes of Palestinian terrorists accused of killing Israelis.
Last week the IDF razed the home of Muntasir Shalabi, a Palestinian-American indicted for killing 19-year-old Yehuda Guetta in a terror attack at the Tapuah junction in May. It did so over the direct objection of US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who had asked Israel to refrain from destroying the home where Shalabi’s estranged wife lived with three of their children.