Committee sets hearing for next month on controversial E1 settlement plans

A committee involved in the approval of West Bank settlement construction has scheduled a meeting for next month to hear objections to controversial plans to build new housing units in the so-called E1 corridor.

A notice posed by the Civil Administration High Planning Subcommittee for Objections says the hearing will be held on March 27 after being pushed off several times, including before US President Joe Biden’s trip to the region last year.

E1 lies within the municipal boundaries of the Ma’ale Adumim settlement east of Jerusalem. Critics of the plans warn that the construction of homes there will pose a major obstacle to the territorial contiguity of a future Palestinian state.

“The government is spitting in the faces of our Americans friends,” the Peace Now settlement watchdog group says in a statement on the upcoming hearing.