Under a merciless sun, Yousef Jahalin feeds his goats on the barren hills east of Jerusalem. His home doesn’t look much like the Promised Land. Rather, it’s dozens of shacks without running water, scattered on both sides of the road that leads from the city to the Dead Sea and a stone’s throw from the Israeli settlers who surround them. Beside him, he explains, there’s Hebrew graffiti from two weeks ago. it says: nekama, meaning revenge. The area is known in Arabic as Khan al-Ahmar and it is located in the West Bank, the territory that Israel has militarily occupied for more than half a century and which, on paper, is part of the Palestinian state that a dozen more countries have recognized in recent days. On Israeli strategic maps, however, it falls within the 12 square kilometers encompassed by the so-called E1, a controversial Jewish settlement project dating back to the 1990s, but which no government (moderate or nationalist) has ever dared to approve because foreign ministries, particularly European ones, clearly inferred its significance: it would divide the West Bank and isolate it from East Jerusalem, the natural capital of a possible Palestinian state.

But that was until now: Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government, containing ultranationalists and ultra-Orthodox representatives, approved it this August. Doing in just weeks what he had spent decades putting on hold, a euphoric Netanyahu made clear last week in a nearby settlement what is really at stake: “There will be no Palestinian state. This place is ours.”

Israel has been promoting the creation of Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank since capturing them in the 1967 Six-Day War. It has targeted areas it most valued permanently preserving, areas connected to Jewish history, or areas ideal for disrupting the continuity of the Palestinian territory. With more than 700,000 settlers today, why so much importance placed on another 3,410 homes?

“The key is location. It’s understood that a large settlement in the heart of the West Bank, dividing the territory into two enclaves, means there will be no Palestinian state,” explains Aviv Tatarsky, a veteran Israeli activist with Ir Amim, a Jerusalem-based peace NGO, from a height next to the Israeli separation wall, which provides an overview of the geography of the military occupation.

Overview of shacks in Khan el-Ahmar.Saeed Qaq

Israel doesn’t view E1 as the rest of the world sees it (a new illegal settlement under international law), but rather as a legal expansion within the territorial boundaries of another settlement, Ma’ale Adumim. It is its third-largest settlement in the West Bank and a sort of commuter town for Jerusalem. Its 40,000 inhabitants live there more for the price of housing and relocation grants than for biblical reasons, such as those championed by the religious and violent ultranationalism that spearheads the settler movement in more isolated areas.

Tatarsky points out that the construction of E1 — expected to begin in 2026, once the project has been put out to tender — will not only separate East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank, from north to south. It will also separate key northern cities, such as Ramallah and Nablus, and southern cities, such as Bethlehem and Hebron, from east to west. “Israel knows that it is very difficult to undo what has happened on the ground,” the activist recalls. It will mean even more endless detours between checkpoints and all kinds of barriers to movement, such as cement blocks, raised barriers, and piles of sand.

But above all, it will ensure that there is only one country between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River: Israel, as Bezalel Smotrich — the ultra-nationalist finance minister to whom Netanyahu gave important prerogatives over colonization in order to return to power in 2022 — has boasted. “We de facto buried the idea of a Palestinian state,” said Smotrich, “through actions, not slogans.”

Bezalel Smotrich, left, holds a map showing the E1 area last August in the West Bank settlement of Ma’ale Adumim.Ronen Zvulun (REUTERS)

He was also very clear about the objective: “The whole fight for 20 years was to cut off the continuity for the Arabs from north to south. We created continuity [for the Israelis] between Jerusalem and the Dead Sea, and we cut off continuity for the Arabs. That’s the plan, and that’s why it’s been so controversial for so many years. Now, when I see the hypocrisy of the European countries with the Gaza war […] who make us out to be the bad guys who are committing genocide […] I think: how crazy it was that we yielded for so long to the hypocritical political pressure of the European countries.”

Below, on the road, cars line up in front of the Israeli military checkpoint. It’s not rush hour. At the checkpoints, in practice, if the soldiers see through the window that the car’s occupants look Jewish, they are given the signal to proceed. If they look Palestinian, it depends. Only cars with yellow license plates — which grant access to Jerusalem and are used by all Jewish settlers in the West Bank and some Palestinians — cross. Palestinian cars with white or green license plates have been forced to detour before. The goal: roads as segregated as possible, facilitating settler mobility at the expense of Palestinians, so that they can, for example, reach Tel Aviv by car in just an hour from their settlements. Project E1 actually includes moving this jammed military checkpoint 14 kilometers east of Jerusalem and building a road that would separate the two traffic streams.

The vehicle occupants gaze, as if it were part of the landscape, at the Khan el-Ahmar shanties on both sides of the road. Perhaps not for much longer. The Israeli Supreme Court gave the green light in 2018 to demolish them and forcibly relocate the inhabitants. It’s the same old cycle: they are in Zone C (the two-thirds of the West Bank over which the Israeli military authorities have full control, under the 1993 Oslo Accords), where all Palestinian construction is illegal and permits are nearly impossible to obtain, while Jewish settlements are proliferating.

Nearby settlements

Yousef Jahalin walks with grass on his shoulder for his livestock. He carries a little less because, he says, a settler stole three of his goats last week. He points to a settlement flying an Israeli flag just a few dozen meters away. The distance can be covered in a couple of minutes.

He’s 44 years old, and the existence of the E1 plan has overshadowed his future since he was a child. Like the other 30 families in his clan. “We don’t know what will become of us,” he admits. “Of course it affects us […] The Israeli government only wants Jews in this area. It shows this in its policies.”

Benjamin Netanyahu on September 15 in the Israeli settlement of Ma’ale Adumim, in the West Bank.DPA vía Europa Press (DPA vía Europa Press)

Now, the approval of construction on their land has transformed an abstract fear into a stopwatch over each of their shacks. A quad bike driven by a hooded man suddenly crosses the settlement. It has the word “security” written on it in Hebrew. It happens daily, Jahalin explains. The noise comes and goes, constantly, threatening. Like the graffiti with the word “revenge” written in Hebrew that can be seen in three different places. The Israeli nationalist far-right knows that, at the moment, it’s setting the agenda and winning.

The most stable and vibrant building is the school. It was designed in 2009 by an Italian NGO specializing in ecological structures. Recycled tires, used for strength, protrude from its clay walls, decorated with slogans such as “We will never be uprooted from this land” and drawings of Palestinian flags or the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. At the entrance, a plaque commemorates the fact that 14 aid agencies, including those of Spain and the EU, funded its construction. A month after its inauguration, the Israeli military authorities issued a demolition order.

Interior of the Jan Al Ahmar school.Saeed Qaq

To the indignation of the most radical Israeli right, it has never been applied. Children learn to pronounce Arabic letters correctly. Notes with their first words written on them, such as mother, father, door, or window, hang from a beam in the classroom. As usual, the courtyard is the liveliest and most cheerful place in the village.

Its principal for the past 13 years, Halima Zahika, does not laugh. She seriously organizes the shifts at the school, which belongs to the Palestinian National Authority network and is home to some 180 children between the ages of five and 15. Not only from Khan el-Ahmar, but also from four other communities, who are picked up by bus. “The students ask us: ‘What will happen to us if they close the school?’ ‘What if they kick us out?’ ‘If they kick us out, will the school close?’ ‘Will they build a new one for us?’ They’re worried… And they ask what will happen to the teachers. We try to calm them down and hide from them the fact that all this affects us too. We tell them to keep studying and that, in case, God forbid, we had to leave, we wouldn’t leave them without an education.”

The head of the community is named Eid Jahalin. His speech is disjointed and angry, like that of someone who has suffered too many disappointments with the Western world, after so many visits from ambassadors (especially European ones) and promises of improvement that never came. This can be seen in the photos that decorate the walls of the bleak room where he receives us, one of the most solid in Khan el-Ahmar.

Eid Jahalin with a folder containing documents about the area.Saeed Qaq

Eid Jahalin insists that his community has been subjected to an “economic war” by Israel for a quarter of a century, which affects their daily lives. “The prohibition on children coming to school due to closures, the theft of donkeys or cattle…” he lists. “It’s like putting someone in jail, not giving them food or water, and watching them slowly die.” The approval of Plan E1, the analogy continues, “is simply the final bullet.”

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