PM’s office: E1 settlement plan came from minister, not government

The Prime Minister’s Office on Tuesday distanced itself from reported plans to build thousands of new homes in a politically incendiary area of the West Bank, calling the initiative the brainchild of former housing and construction minister Uri Ariel, a member of the right-wing, pro-settlement Jewish Home party.

The plan to build in the area known as E1, situated between Jerusalem and the settlement of Ma’aleh Adumim, was drafted at the private initiative of Ariel, “without the required authorization,” and it has “no validity,” PMO officials said in a statement Tuesday. Ariel is agriculture minister in the current government.

“The Ministry of Housing has no authority either to plan or to build beyond the Green Line,” which separates Israel from the West Bank, said the statement.

“These plans therefore have no standing and are not binding on anyone.”

The effort to distance Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from a member of a key coalition partner followed claims Monday by the anti-settlement Peace Now organization that the Housing Ministry was “quietly working on” plans for 8,372 new units in the 12-square kilometer area of land known as E1 (E standing for east of Jerusalem).

According to data provided by Peace Now, the ministry paid NIS 3.6 million ($930,000) to the Ma’ale Adumim council to plan three new neighborhoods to be called Mevasseret Adumim, without a public tender that would have drawn international opposition.

Successive Israeli governments have considered building in E1 to establish “facts on the ground” and ensure that Ma’ale Adumim, with a population of around 40,000, remains linked to Jerusalem rather than isolated as a Jewish enclave, if and when a Palestinian state arises.

Attempts to build have, however, met with stiff international opposition.

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Palestinians claim a new neighborhood in E1 would ruin the chances for a Palestinian metropolis between Ramallah and Bethlehem, also connected to East Jerusalem, scuppering Palestinian efforts to create territorial contiguity between the northern and southern parts of the West Bank. Earlier E1 construction plans were frozen by Ariel Sharon’s government in 2005.

In October 2013, the Housing Ministry — then controlled by Ariel — issued tenders for the planning of tens of thousands of housing units in West Bank settlements, including, among others, thousands of units in E1 and in E2 (Givat Eitam, south of Bethlehem), Peace Now said.

International uproar over the tenders prompted Netanyahu to cancel the moves in November of that year. But one year later, Peace Now says after obtaining Housing Ministry documents, the ministry — without tenders — hired architects to work on many of the plans that had been canceled, including in E1, E2, Nokdim (south of Bethlehem), Tekoa (northeast of Hebron) and Ma’ale Amos (near Tekoa).

Tuesday’s statement follows one on Monday from the current housing minister, Yoav Galant, of the Kulanu Party, who told Army Radio that “there is no planning and no preparation for planning in that area.”

Ariel is a resident of the Kfar Adumim settlement, northeast of E1.

The Peace Now report claimed that, overall, the government is planning 55,548 housing units in West Bank settlements, including the E1 building, 78% of which lie to the east of the West Bank security barrier. Tuesday’s statement from the PMO related only to the E1 plans, not to wider settlement planning.