From the Liveblog of
Thursday, August 14, 2025
Smotrich: Netanyahu backs my West Bank policy, ‘is letting me create the revolution’
Add ToI as a Preferred Source on GoogleSam Sokol is a former political correspondent at The Times of Israel. He was previously a reporter for the Jerusalem Post, Jewish Telegraphic Agency and Haaretz. He is the author of "Putin’s Hybrid War and the Jews"
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich says Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu supports his controversial plan to build thousands of homes for Israeli settlers on a piece of land that would connect East Jerusalem to the large West Bank settlement of Maale Adumim.
“He backs me up in everything concerning Judea and Samaria, and is letting me create the revolution,” Smotrich says in an address to an event in Maale Adumim organized by the Yesha Council, the umbrella organization representing local authorities in settlements.
Smotrich, who holds a junior ministerial position within the Defense Ministry that gives him wide say over settlement construction, says the approvals in the long-frozen E1 settlement project are a response to a wave of Western countries that announced or floated plans to recognize a Palestinian state at the United Nations next month.
“Today, anyone in the world who tries to recognize a Palestinian state will receive an answer from us on the ground,” he declares. “Today we are writing a historic chapter in the story of the redemption of the people of Israel in their land.”
The E1 project has been particularly contentious for decades because it would create a physical link between East Jerusalem, which Palestinians have viewed as a future capital of their state, and Maale Adumim. Critics argue that it would bisect the territory of a future Palestinian state.
The project has been discussed for decades but never moved forward, in part due to international pressure.
Smotrich boasts that “after twenty years of delays… the traffic jam has been broken [and] the E1 plan is underway,” adding that the government is “fulfilling the promise and connecting Maale Adumim with a strategic, security and demographic connection, which ensures our united capital for generations.”
Thanking US President Trump and Ambassador Mike Huckabee for their backing, Smotrich says that they are “men of truth with a clear and distinct moral voice that is not confused by the hypocrisy of the West.”
Trump and Huckabee understand “that a Palestinian state would endanger the existence of Israel” and that the West Bank is “an inseparable part of our land, the one that God promised to our father Abraham and gave to us thousands of years ago,” Smotrich says.
Trump and Huckabee do not appear to have commented specifically on Smotrich’s E1 announcement. Netanyahu likewise has remained mum on the step.
Smotrich appeals to the prime minister to “apply Israeli sovereignty in Judea and Samaria, to forever remove from the agenda the idea of dividing the land and to ensure that by September the hypocritical leaders in Europe will have nothing to recognize.”
The Times of Israel Community.