“Every minute I expect the Israelis to come with an eviction order and we’ll have nowhere to go,” says Abdullah Arara (60) from the Jahalin Bedouin tribe. He lives with his two wives and 11 children in a small, ramshackle encampment just off the main Jericho-Ramallah Road.
Arara says the tribe was evicted by the Israeli authorities from the northern Negev Desert and he has lived in the Kasarat encampment for 45 years. But the community of 200, most of whom are children, live in the area of the occupied West Bank known as E1, which has become the latest battleground for control of the land between Palestinians and Jewish settlers.
The E in E1 stands for east. The area consists of a few barren hilltops directly east of Jerusalem’s urban sprawl, marking the start of the Judaean Desert – the last available undeveloped land adjacent to the holy city.
All of E1 lies within the municipal boundaries of Maale Adumim, one of the largest settler cities in the West Bank, with a population approaching 45,000.
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For the city’s mayor, Guy Yifrah, the decision earlier this month by Israel to authorise a new neighbourhood of 3,400 apartments on E1 was overdue.
“I was born in Maale Adumim 43 years ago and I want to continue to live here and raise my children here. And this is what I want to do as mayor – to ensure the next generation here can build a home in the city where they were born. But unfortunately, we haven’t built a new neighbourhood in 20 years even though we need to build 800 new apartments each year just to keep up with natural growth.”
The E1 project was initially approved almost 30 years ago when Yitzhak Rabin was prime minister, but fierce opposition from the international community, led by both Democratic and Republican administrations in Washington, prevented construction.
Israel’s West Bank police district headquarters was transferred to an E1 hilltop and highways linking Jerusalem to Maale Adumim were built, but the construction of new homes was frozen.
The administration of president Donald Trump ended Washington’s opposition to settlement construction and Israel’s right-wing government seized the diplomatic window of opportunity to end the freeze on E1 development.
Twenty-one western states, including Ireland, condemned the Israeli decision as a “violation of international law”. Palestinian Authority spokesperson Nabil Abu Rudeineh warned that E1 construction will block the possibility of territorial contiguity for Palestinians between East Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Ramallah and lead to an escalation in tension and instability.
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From a lookout point on the edge of Maale Adumim, facing west towards Jerusalem, the mayor speaks to reporters on a tour facilitated by Jerusalem-based Media Central, which describes itself as a non-profit liaison service for journalists and which organised transport and access to interviewees. He says he believes E1 is the key to the city’s future.
“As you can see, E1 covers the five kilometres as the crow flies between Jerusalem and Maale Adumim, and for 30 years Israel was prevented from building here for political reasons. A narrative was accepted that E1 will cut a future Palestinian state in two but it’s not true,” he says.
“I oppose a Palestinian state, which I consider an existential threat to Israel. Even though E1 construction is essential for this city, the Palestinians will still be able to travel between the north and south West Bank using an existing highway 15km east of Maale Adumim.
“So E1 will not prevent the establishment of a future Palestinian state and the Palestinians will continue to enjoy freedom of movement.”
This assertion contradicts the narrative of finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, the head of the far-right Religious Zionist party, himself a West Bank settler, who pushed through the E1 project in his capacity as minister responsible for West Bank civilian affairs.
Calling the development “the final nail in the coffin of a Palestinian state”, Smotrich said E1 “practically erases the two-state delusion and consolidates the Jewish people’s hold on the heart of the land of Israel”.
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The challenges facing Maale Adumim municipal planners are of little interest to Abdullah Arara. He has more pressing issues. Along with the expected eviction orders, the residents of all the Bedouin encampments in the area live in constant fear of attacks from settlers.
He says his relatives on another encampment close to the settlement of Adam were attacked this week and one had his arm broken. “It’s got worse since this government came to power and much worse since the start of the Gaza war.”
He says settlers are forcing the Bedouins off the land. “But we can’t move to an apartment in a Palestinian town because we raise sheep. We need to stay on the land.”
The Palestinian Authority provides water to Kasarat. Unrwa, the United Nations refugee agency, delivers flour every three months. The European Union donates trailers for accommodation, and international aid organisations supply food for the animals.
Another member of the Jahalin tribe, Ali Arara (65) is even more pessimistic. “The Israelis are already planning for our eviction. They won’t stop at E1; they also have plans for Jordan and Syria,” he says. “The condemnations by the international community are a waste of time. It won’t prevent the E1 construction.”
He says Kasarat has not been attacked by settlers but the Bedouin keep away from two settler outposts on nearby hilltops in an effort to avoid trouble. “They claim we are squatting on the land illegally but we were here before the settlers. The big settlement of Kfar Adumim down the road was built after we arrived.
“I don’t know what the future will bring but it will be bad for everyone in the West Bank,” he says. “It’s all in the hands of Allah.”
More than 700,000 Israelis live in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. The territories were captured by Israel in 1967 and are sought by Palestinians for a future sate.
When Israel and the Palestinians signed the Oslo Accords in the mid-1990s, West Bank territory was divided into three sections: Area A, including all the major Palestinian cities, came under the control of the Palestinian Authority; Area B was under the authority’s civil control but Israeli military control; and Area C- which makes up 60 per cent of the territory, including all the settlements – remained under full Israeli civil and security control.
The arrangement was supposed to be temporary as the Palestinians moved towards full statehood. But the Oslo process collapsed and both sides realised the importance of staking a claim to the land and seizing every available hilltop, partly to thwart the territorial aspirations of the other.
Scores of small Bedouin encampments can be seen along the sides of West Bank roads, often consisting of little more than a water container and a few trailers. Young settlers, dubbed hilltop youth, have also seized mountain tops, backed by the far-right parties in prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s coalition. They believe that the biblical land of Israel was given by God to the Jewish people and Jewish settlement is fulfilling a divine promise.
The international community considers settlements illegal under international law, but so far this year the Israeli government has approved 25,000 new West Bank homes.
E1 is only a small piece in the jigsaw.
