In 1975, 23 families together settled land just east of Jerusalem. It was to become Ma’aleh Adumim. Its city status was formally recognised in 1991 by the Israeli government, making it a first new city in what it deems “Judea and Samaria”, known to expelled Palestinian occupants and the rest of the world as the West Bank.
The territory was seized by Israel in 1967 and has been ruled by military force since. Its occupation and continuing Israeli settlement are viewed as illegal internationally, not least by the International Court of Justice.
The West Bank has a population of 750,000 Palestinians and more than 670,000 Israeli settlers, of which 220,000 are in East Jerusalem, which is so far the only part formally annexed by Israel. Complete annexation is a cherished project of the far right in the government, which has sharply accelerated the process in advance of the October general election, which is expected to see the government of Binyamin Netanyahu ousted.
Today, Ma’aleh Adumim is home to more than 40,000 and thrives as a suburb of Jerusalem. Its “city” administrative status allows everyone – except West Bank Palestinians, who do not have Israeli citizenship – freedom to become a resident simply by buying a property on the market.
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Its settler population mostly moved to the West Bank for very mundane reasons such as proximity to work, which had little to do with the tenets of Zionist ideology or grand schemes of social engineering. As one, “Abigail”, told a Portuguese ethnographer, the real settlers are those who “go out and live on a hill, with, like, caravans, in the middle of nowhere. That’s a settler ... Here there’s none of the fanatics ... There are degrees of settlers, apparently.” She laughs. “We’re light, light settlers.”
The light settlers of Ma’aleh Adumim, however, are not really that different. They have no need to raid Palestinian farms to drive them off their land. Their state does it for them. It also arms their fanatical counterparts, and stands passively by as they terrorise villagers eking out a living, as their families have done, in “Greater Israel”.
As journalist Gideon Levy reflects ruefully on newly-announced sanctions targeting settlers: “The settlement enterprise is an all-Israeli undertaking of the government and indeed the entire system. There is not a single official body not involved, directly or indirectly, either by action or by omission ...
“It is the state that should be punishing violent settlers, if it were a state of law; that is not the world’s job. It is those responsible for the settlement enterprise who should be punished by the world because the Israeli government, like any government, cannot punish itself.”
Ma’aleh Adumim is growing: in 2025 tenders were issued for more than 6,700 new housing units there.
But as the construction of Jewish homes continues at breakneck pace, 1,078 Palestinian homes were this year demolished in the West Bank; 4,100 Palestinians were displaced by demolitions and there have been 1,400 settler attacks on farms. Eighty-one Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces or settlers in the territory this year.
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Jerusalem is bursting and keen to expand, while Ma’aleh Adumim’s commuters, cut off from the city by a thin strip of what they see as “hostile” Palestinian territory, have long been desirous of a safe, contiguous link. That is now promised by the government in the controversial “E1” development, 1,200 homes on the neighbouring 12sq km site.
E1, for which new tenders were sought last month, would put 20 Palestinian communities, or some 5,000 people, at severe risk of eviction and demolition. These include Bedouin communities who were previously forcibly introduced to allow the earlier expansion of Ma’aleh Adumim.
Since the early 1990s, the E1 project has provoked significant international pushback and been frozen several times. In 2012, after the Palestinians won observer status at the UN, Binyamin Netanyahu resurrected it in retaliation.
It is a red line – as much as maltreatment of Palestinians – for many of Israel’s western allies. They see it as a critical point of no return in Israel’s rejection of what is seen as the only path to peace, a two-state solution. It precipitated last week’s announcement by 12 states, including Ireland, of a boycott of settlement goods and sanctions on companies involved in abetting them.
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Contiguity is a vital concern also to Palestinians, who see E1 as a deliberate attempt to bisect and scupper the viability of any future contiguous Palestinian state. Located between Jerusalem and the main Palestinian cities of Ramallah and Bethlehem, it would sever northern and southern parts of the West Bank. Israeli control could also make East Jerusalem, sought by Palestinians as their future capital, inaccessible.
Israeli NGO Peace Now warns that the Netanyahu government “is exploiting every minute to deepen the annexation of the West Bank and prevent the possibility of a two-state solution”.
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Israel does not demur: reviving E1 in 2025, Netanyahu boasted that “we are going to fulfil our promise that there will be no Palestinian state”. Far-right minister for finance Bezalel Smotrich says E1 will “bury the idea of a Palestinian state”.
