Even a glance at a map shows that everything being said about E-1 is a lie - or pure hypocrisy ~ Elder Of Ziyon

Thursday, August 21, 2025

Even a glance at a map shows that everything being said about E-1 is a lie - or pure hypocrisy

Israel has given final approval for a controversial settlement project that would effectively cut off the occupied West Bank from East Jerusalem and divide the territory in two.

Construction in the E1 area has been frozen for two decades amid fierce international opposition. Critics warn it would put an end to hopes for a viable, contiguous Palestinian state.

UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy said the E1 plans would, if implemented, "would divide a Palestinian state in two, mark a flagrant breach of international law and critically undermine the two-state solution".

Let's go through the lies and hypocrisy:

A glance at a map shows that the West Bank is still quite contiguous. The "divided in two" rhetoric is absolute nonsense. Here is Peace Now's map of E1, Jerusalem and Maale Adumim from 2011:

Look at all that contiguity on the eastern half of the map!

Others point out that this will isolate the Arabs of east Jerusalem from the West Bank. Yet those Arabs, whether citizens of Israel or recognized as residents of Jerusalem, have more mobility than any Jew - they can go anywhere in Israel and anywhere in the West Bank. E-1 doesn't affect them at all.

Maale Adumim is never going to be evacuated in any possible peace plan. Israel has never conceded the area and every plan from Taba to Annapolis to even the unofficial Geneve Initiative had Israel holding on to Maale Adumim with at least a road between it and Jerusalem (in exchange for land swaps.) E-1 makes the land connection to Jerusalem wider but it does not change the contiguity issue. The only potential problem is that Palestinians would have to drive extra time to go around the area.

Except that this isn't true either.

In March the Knesset approved a road for Palestinians that would cut through the area and make it even easier for Palestinians to go from Bethlehem to Ramallah than they do today!

Again, map from Peace Now:

Peace Now calls this road built to make Palestinian lives easier an "apartheid road" - because Israelis wouldn't use it. Which means that it is "apartheid" because it, um, discriminates against Jews.

Now, let's talk more about contiguity in a Palestinian state. Clearly, Gaza cannot be contiguous with the West Bank. So a Palestinian state will always be fragmented. The "peace camp" has proposals to minimize that problem - building an elevated road or tunnel between Gaza and the West Bank.

Meaning, the exact same solution they propose to link two non-contiguous Palestinian areas is rejected when Israel proposes it in the West Bank to make it easier to link two already contiguous areas.

Let's step back further.

Who says contiguity is even necessary for a well-functioning state? There are bizarre borders in Europe like in Baarle-Nassau that has enclaves and counter-enclaves between Belgium and the Netherlands. In the US, Alaska and Hawaii are not contiguous with the other 48 states. And I once made this map to show the absurdity of the Palestinian demands that contiguity is necessary for viability.

The viability of a state is based on good governance and good relationships with its neighbors, and has little to do with contiguity.

Yet the same people who insist on contiguity have no problem insisting that Israel separate some of its citizens from others. Indeed, for 19 years, Mount Scopus was a completely separate Israeli enclave within Jordanian-annexed Jerusalem, where Jordanian troops did not adhere to the armistice agreement to allow free passage, and no one outside Israel really cared.

To be clear, I oppose a Palestinian state. I support E-1 as a necessary component to fully connect Maale Adumim to the rest of Jerusalem and not leave it open to the types of deadly attacks that isolated Mount Scopus and the Jewish Quarter were subjected to in 1948. (For some reason, contiguity is only considered important for Palestinians, not Israelis.)

When you get past all the lies and hypocrisy and poor arguments, there is only one point that Israel's critics are really making: E-1 makes it almost impossible for any part of Jerusalem to be the capital of a Palestinian state. Given that dividing Jerusalem is essentially an impossible task, the fact that a divided Jerusalem would endanger the lives of a lot of people, and that Israel already annexed Jerusalem and will never consider redividing it, E-1 doesn't change anything on the ground except the fantasies of people who hate Israel.

The Palestinian insistence on Jerusalem is not based on any historic connection or legal claim, but on the desire to separate Jews from their holiest sites. They didn't demand Jerusalem as their capital in their 1964 or 1968 PLO charters, and the first time I am aware of they issued an official document with that demand was in their 1988 "Declaration of Independence." It is not a long-standing demand - it is an attempt to cut the Jewish soul out of Israel.

And that is what Peace Now, the UN and the European critics of the E-1 plan really want to see. E-1 doesn't affect the nebulous prospects of a Palestinian state in the least. But it hurts the chances of separating Jews from their holiest places.

Everything else is a smokescreen.