On a Hill Between Two Futures: Life, Land and the Specter of E1
The morning air tastes of diesel and citrus. Somewhere below the ribbon of road that runs from Jerusalem to the east, a child rides a bicycle past a strip mall, the hum of air-conditioning units undercutting the distant bleat of a goat. Drive a few minutes further and the scene fractures: concrete gives way to tents and battered trailers, palm trees to thorny scrub, shiny SUVs to flocks of sheep grazing among terraces that have fed families for generations.
I was standing on that dividing line recently—between Ma’ale Adumim, the tidy Israeli suburb built on hillsides, and the sparse Bedouin encampments that punctuate the landscape of the West Bank. Up close, the political language hollowed out into sharp human details: a child’s sneaker in the dust, barbed wire glinting in the sun, a simple metal placard warning of imminent demolition. That placard, a bureaucratic footnote to a colossal plan called E1, is what might decide the future of a land and the fate of a two-state solution that has teetered for decades.
What is E1, and why does it matter?
E1 is not a highway or a park; it is a plan to expand Ma’ale Adumim westward into roughly 12 square kilometres of hills and valleys that sit between the Israeli municipality and East Jerusalem. To planners, it’s a continuity project—connecting communities. To many Palestinians and international observers, it’s a wedge that would sever East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank, making the possibility of a contiguous Palestinian state increasingly remote.
“This isn’t about construction permits,” said Laila Mansour, a community organiser from the nearby town of Abu Dis. “It’s about geography being weaponised to rewrite the map.”
Ma’ale Adumim prides itself on palm-lined boulevards and a modern shopping centre. Founded in the 1970s, its population swelled to around 50,000 residents who say their city simply needs space to breathe. Walk its streets, and you find family restaurants, synagogues and playgrounds—comforts that make the place feel like suburbia anywhere.
Walk east from the municipal boundary, though, and the rhythm changes. Tents—some permanent, some makeshift—dot the slopes. Crop terraces show the faint scars of familiar hands. These are communities that have lived here for generations, but their legal status is precarious. A Bedouin farmer I met, Attalah, who has grazed his animals on these hills for as long as he can remember, showed me a notice: 60 days to vacate or face demolition, and if the state demolishes your home, you pay the bill.
“They say the land is theirs,” Attalah told me with a wry, exhausted smile. “They call their maps master plans. For us, it is our life. How do you demolish a dream?”
Voices across the divide
On the tidy side of the divide, Miriam Levy, a Ma’ale Adumim resident and mother of three, put it bluntly. “We want a safe place to live. People keep saying ‘two states’ like it’s the only future, but what about our children’s future? We were given this land; we built here.”
Across the political spectrum, experts warn that such development would have consequences far beyond the horizon. “If E1 proceeds, it will create a physical barrier that undermines any meaningful territorial contiguity for a Palestinian state,” said Dr. Rana Abu-Saleh, a political geographer who has tracked settlements for two decades. “Planners and politicians may call it urban growth, but urban planning is being used as a tool of strategy—one that has long-term demographic and diplomatic effects.”
International law and global opinion add another layer to the debate. The United Nations and most countries regard Israeli settlements in occupied territories as a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, a point Israel disputes. Successive American administrations have historically pushed back against E1; even those that have warmed to settlement expansion have rarely greenlighted a formalisation of E1’s footprint. That tug-of-war between Washington and Jerusalem is part of why the project has lingered in plans and permits for decades.
The human ledger: people, numbers, consequences
Numbers help, but they can never replace the faces I met. Still, they matter: hundreds of thousands of Israeli settlers live beyond Israel’s pre-1967 lines, and Ma’ale Adumim alone is a mid-sized city now. On the other side are Palestinian towns and Bedouin encampments whose residents often lack formal recognition and whose futures are directly shaped by planning decisions thousands of kilometres away.
“Imagine a necklace; now imagine someone cuts the thread in the middle,” said Omar Haddad, a Palestinian urban planner who has modelled territorial outcomes for decades. “That is what E1 represents. It would not only reduce land available for Palestinians; it would prevent East Jerusalem from serving as the capital of a sovereign state.”
For families like Attalah’s, the consequences are immediate: loss of grazing land, threatened home demolitions, the social disintegration that follows displacement. For politicians, the consequences are long-term and strategic: a shift in facts on the ground that hardens positions and narrows diplomatic options.
Why should the world care?
Because this patch of hills is one small part of a global story about borders, identity and the politics of space. Around the world, urban planning is increasingly political—used to segregate, to absorb, to erase. The stakes in E1 are not just local; they are emblematic of how modern conflicts are fought not only with tanks and votes, but with roads, permits and the slow accretion of buildings.
What does justice look like when the law, the map and daily life all point in different directions? Who gets to write the future of a place where histories and claims collide? And as global citizens, do we have a responsibility to respond when a city plan may foreclose the human rights of another people?
These are not rhetorical exercises. They are questions families wake up to here every morning.
Where do we go from here?
Netanyahu’s recent comments denying the inevitability of a Palestinian state have sharpened the debate. For critics, E1 is a concrete step toward a single polity that integrates the occupied territories in ways that make Palestinian sovereignty impossible. For proponents, it is justified urban growth. For the many in between, it is a reminder of how fragile prospects for peace have become.
“I want my grandchildren to have a place to plant olive trees,” Attalah said at our last meeting. “If those trees are gone, what story will we tell them about our land?”
As you scroll past images on your screen, consider this: borders are often decided not in battlefields but in council chambers and construction plans. The contour lines on a map become contours of someone’s life. What do we owe to the people who live on those lines? And how do we keep politics from flattening entire futures into lines on a paper map?
There are no simple answers. But listening helps. And if you find yourself moved, consider telling the story you’ve just read—share it, ask questions of your leaders, and ask the hard question: in a world that prizes borders and belonging, who counts as belonging?
