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Israel approves major West Bank settlement project

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and a woman hold a map that shows the E1 settlement scheme, that would split East Jerusalem from the occupied West Bank. (File/Reuters)
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and a woman hold a map that shows the E1 settlement scheme, that would split East Jerusalem from the occupied West Bank. (File/Reuters)
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Updated 20 August 2025
AFP
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Israel approves major West Bank settlement project

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and a woman hold a map that shows the E1 settlement scheme.
  • Critics say the settlement would effectively cut the West Bank in two, undermining hopes for a contiguous Palestinian state with east Jerusalem as its capital
Updated 20 August 2025
AFP
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JERUSALEM: Israel approved a major settlement project on Wednesday in an area of the occupied West Bank that the international community has warned threatens the viability of a future Palestinian state.
Israel has long had ambitions to build on the roughly 12-square-kilometer (five-square-mile) parcel known as E1 just east of Jerusalem, but the plan had been stalled for years amid international opposition.
Critics say the settlement would effectively cut the West Bank in two, undermining hopes for a contiguous Palestinian state with east Jerusalem as its capital.
Last week, Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich backed plans to build around 3,400 homes on the ultra-sensitive tract of land, which lies between Jerusalem and the Israeli settlement of Maale Adumim.
“I am pleased to announce that just a short while ago, the civil administration approved the planning for the construction of the E1 neighborhood,” the mayor of Maale Adumim, Guy Yifrach, said in a statement Wednesday.
The Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority swiftly slammed the move.
“This undermines the chances of implementing the two-state solution, establishing a Palestinian state on the ground, and fragments its geographic and demographic unity,” the PA’s foreign ministry said in a statement.
It added the move would entrench “division of the occupied West Bank into isolated areas and cantons that are disconnected from one another, turning them into something akin to real prisons, where movement is only possible through Israeli checkpoints and under the terror of armed settler militias.”
All of Israel’s settlements in the West Bank, occupied since 1967, are considered illegal under international law, regardless of whether they have Israeli planning permission.
Israel heavily restricts the movement of West Bank Palestinians, who must obtain permits from authorities to travel through checkpoints to cross into east Jerusalem or Israel.
King Abdullah II of Jordan on Wednesday also affirmed his country’s rejection of the E1 project, saying “the two-state solution is the only way to achieve a just and comprehensive peace.”
Violence in the West Bank has soared since the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel that triggered the Gaza war.
Since then, Israeli troops and settlers have killed at least 971 Palestinians in the West Bank, including many militants, according to health ministry figures.
Over the same period, at least 36 Israelis, including security forces, have been killed in Palestinian attacks or during Israeli military operations, according to official figures.
UN chief Antonio Guterres warned last week that constructing Israeli homes in the E1 area would “put an end to” hopes for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Aviv Tatarsky, a researcher at Ir Amim, an Israeli NGO focusing on Jerusalem within the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, also condemned the move.
“Today’s approval demonstrates how determined Israel is in pursuing what Minister Smotrich has described as a strategic program to bury the possibility of a Palestinian state and to effectively annex the West Bank,” he said.
“This is a conscious Israeli choice to implement an apartheid regime,” he added, calling on the international community to take urgent and effective measures against the move.
Far-right Israeli ministers have in recent months openly called for Israel’s annexation of the territory.
Israeli NGO Peace Now, which monitors settlement activity in the West Bank, said last week that infrastructure work in E1 could begin within a few months, and housing construction within about a year.
Excluding east Jerusalem, the West Bank is home to around three million Palestinians, as well as about 500,000 Israeli settlers.

Topics: War on Gaza West Bank Israel

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What’s at stake in Iraq’s parliamentary election

Updated 10 sec ago
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What’s at stake in Iraq’s parliamentary election

What’s at stake in Iraq’s parliamentary election
Updated 10 sec ago
BAGHDAD: Iraqis are preparing to vote in a parliamentary election that comes at a crucial moment in the country and the region.
The vote will begin Sunday with polling for members of the security forces and displaced people living in camps, and the general election is set for Tuesday.
The outcome of the vote will influence whether Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani can serve a second term.
The election comes amid fears of another war between Israel and Iran and potential Israeli or US strikes on Iran-backed groups in Iraq. Baghdad seeks to maintain a delicate balance in its relations with Tehran and Washington amid increasing pressure from the Trump administration over the presence of Iran-linked armed groups.
Here’s a look at what to expect in the upcoming vote.
Iraq’s electoral system
This year’s election will be the seventh since the US-led invasion of 2003 that unseated the country’s longtime strongman ruler, Saddam Hussein.
In the security vacuum after Saddam’s fall, the country fell into years of bloody civil war that saw the rise of extremist groups, including the Daesh group. But in recent years, the violence has subsided. Rather than security, the main concern of many Iraqis now is the lack of job opportunities and lagging public services — including regular power cuts despite the country’s energy wealth.
Under the law, 25 percent of the country’s 329 parliamentary seats must go to women, and nine seats are allocated for religious minorities. The position of speaker of Parliament is also assigned to a Sunni according to convention in Iraq’s post-2003 power-sharing system, while the prime minister is always Shiite and the president a Kurd.
Voter turnout has steadily fallen in recent elections. In the last parliamentary election in 2021, turnout was 41 percent, a record low in the post-Saddam era, down from 44 percent in the 2018 election, which at the time was an all-time low.
However, only 21.4 million out of a total of 32 million eligible voters have updated their information and obtained voter cards, a decrease from the last parliamentary election in 2021, when about 24 million voters registered.
Unlike past elections, there will be no polling stations outside of the country.
The main players
There are 7,744 candidates competing, most of them from a range of largely sectarian-aligned parties, in addition to some independents.
They include Shiite blocs led by former Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki, cleric Ammar Al-Hakim, and several linked to armed groups; competing Sunni factions led by former Parliament speaker Mohammed Al-Halbousi and current speaker Mahmoud Al-Mashhadani; and the two main Kurdish parties, the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan.
Several powerful, Iran-linked Shiite militias are participating in the election via associated political parties. They include the Kataib Hezbollah militia, with its Harakat Huqouq (Rights Movement) bloc, and the Sadiqoun Bloc led by the leader of the Asaib Ahl Al-Haq militia, Qais Al-Khazali.
However, one of the most prominent players in the country’s politics is sitting the election out.
The popular Sadrist Movement, led by influential Shiite cleric Muqtada Al-Sadr, is boycotting. Al-Sadr’s bloc won the largest number of seats in the 2021 election but later withdrew after failed negotiations over forming a government, amid a standoff with rival Shiite parties. He has since boycotted the political system.
The Sadrist stronghold of Sadr City on the outskirts of Baghdad is home to roughly 40 percent of Baghdad’s population and has long played a decisive role in shaping the balance of power among Shiite factions.
But in the run-up to this election, the usually vibrant streets were almost entirely devoid of campaign posters or banners. Instead, a few signs calling for an election boycott could be seen.
Meanwhile, some reformist groups emerging from mass anti-government protests that began in October 2019 are participating but have been bogged down by internal divisions and lack of funding and political support.
Concerns about the process
There have been widespread allegations of corruption and vote-buying ahead of the election, and 848 candidates were disqualified by election officials, sometimes for obscure reasons such as allegedly insulting religious rituals or members of the armed forces.
Past elections in Iraq were often marred by political violence, including assassinations of candidates, attacks on polling stations and clashes between supporters of different blocs.
While overall levels of violence have subsided, a candidate was also assassinated in the run-up to this year’s election.
On Oct. 15, Baghdad Provincial Council member Safaa Al-Mashhadani, a Sunni candidate in the Al-Tarmiya district north of the capital, was killed by a car bomb. Five suspects have been arrested in connection with the killing, which is being prosecuted as a terrorist act.
Al-Sudani seeks another term
Al-Sudani came to power in 2022 with the backing of a group of pro-Iran parties but has since sought to balance Iraq’s relations with Tehran and Washington. He has positioned himself as a pragmatist focused on improving public services.
While Iraq has seen relative stability during Al-Sudani’s first term, he does not have an easy path to a second one. Only one Iraqi prime minister, Maliki, has served more than one term since 2003.
The election outcome will not necessarily indicate whether or not Al-Sudani stays. In several past elections in Iraq, the bloc winning the most seats has not been able to impose its preferred candidate.
On one side, Al-Sudani faces disagreements with some leaders in the Shiite Coordination Framework bloc that brought him to power over control of state institutions. On the other side, he faces increasing pressure from the US to control the country’s militias.
A matter of particular contention has been the fate of the Popular Mobilization Forces, a coalition of militias that formed to fight the Daesh group. It was formally placed under the control of the Iraqi military in 2016 but in practice still operates with significant autonomy. Members of the PMF will be voting alongside Iraqi army soldiers and other security forces on Saturday.

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