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Middle East|Tiny Patch of West Bank Land Fuels Dreams of Greater Israel
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/25/world/middleeast/west-bank-e1-israel.html
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Israel’s approval of a settlement project delayed for decades shows how far Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has gone in dashing Palestinian aspirations.
Aug. 25, 2025, 5:28 a.m. ET
The plans for Israeli settlement construction in an area known as E1, a small but strategic patch of land in the occupied West Bank, were laid before Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu first came to power nearly three decades ago.
Actually breaking ground there was long taboo, since the land is considered critical to any future Palestinian state, but building may now begin soon.
Israel’s final approval for the settlement project, granted last week, shows how far Mr. Netanyahu and his hard-right government have gone in bucking the internationally accepted parameters for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Since the deadly Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, that ignited the devastating war in Gaza, Mr. Netanyahu, with the apparent backing of President Trump and his administration, seems to have dropped any semblance of accepting a form of Palestinian statehood, however limited, in favor of a greater Israel — one that extends beyond the boundaries of the original Jewish state founded in 1948.
Experts say Mr. Netanyahu also appears to have given up on his vision of forging relations with an outer circle of moderate Arab states, which he used to argue would help squeeze the Palestinians into territorial compromise.
Instead, he is etching the contours of indefinite dominance over the lands Israel conquered in the Arab-Israeli war of 1967, including the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, dismantling the scaffolding of a future Palestinian state.
