Does E-1 spell the end of a two-state solution?
Yossi Alpher — September 8, 2026
Views and positions expressed here are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent NJN's views and policy positions.
Q. The Netanyahu government’s decision to begin building in the area near Jerusalem known as E-1 appears to be a long-anticipated attempt to block, at least geographically, any attempt to carve out a Palestinian state in the West Bank. Is this how you see it?
A. Block a Palestinian state not just geographically but also, and first and foremost, politically and electorally. With Knesset elections slated for October 27, Prime Minister Netanyahu is throwing red meat to his right-wing electorate and, indeed, to all those angry Israeli Jews whose reaction to the October 7, 2023 atrocities was to join the opposition to a two-state solution, regardless of the consequences for Israeli demography and democracy.
Lest we are misled by events, a Palestinian state is currently not on either the Israeli or the Palestinian agenda. Nor was it in the months before October 7. At the international and inter-Arab levels, it is an aspiration and a slogan — but hardly a realistic option under present circumstances.
Yet despite and in spite of Israeli plans to build at E-1, a Palestinian state based in the West Bank would still be a possibility.
Q. Why is this settlement-building initiative different from others in terms of thwarting the two-state solution?
A. Building an initial 1,234 housing units (out of a planned total of over 3,000) at E-1 would have a double-whammy effect on aspirations for a Palestinian state in the West Bank. For one, those 12 square kilometers of E-1 construction would cut off East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank, thereby thwarting legitimate Palestinian aspirations to build a capital in East Jerusalem, the most natural and logical location.
Then too, Israeli housing construction at E-1 would sabotage long-standing plans to connect the northern and southern parts of the West Bank — Samaria and Judea in Israeli parlance — by a road in sovereign Palestinian territory lying in the desert directly to the east of Jerusalem. Advocates of a Palestinian state argue that E-1 construction would in effect cut that state in two. Then too, Arab East Jerusalem and its suburbs, al-Azaria, Abu Dis, etc. would be severed from the direction, eastward, of natural growth.
For these reasons, opposition to Israeli municipal construction at E-1 has for years been particularly vocal and adamant at the international level. The global community, after all, remains committed both legally and declaratively to a viable two-state solution. New Jewish Narrative and Israel’s Peace Now have played a prominent role here. Currently, Prime Minister Netanyahu apparently reasons that international condemnation of Israel is already so widespread, and his electoral needs so desperate, that controversy over E-1 is a virtual drop in the bucket.
Q. Let’s assume Netanyahu remains prime minister after October 27. Beholden to a right-messianist coalition, he moves ahead with construction at E-1. Is this really the end of a two-state solution?
A. I would argue that this is not the case. Obviously, even today and even in the event of the emergence of a more moderate Israeli government and the radical weakening of Islamist Hamas, a great deal has to change in order to render a Palestinian state feasible. But in the current context, let’s just address the territorial issues.
Q. Israeli settlements?
A. As matters stand, a Palestinian state arguably is barely viable even if it is territorially contiguous between north and south. Its internal contiguity is ruptured in every possible direction by Israeli settlements. These have proliferated at an extreme rate under the past four years of Netanyahu rule. But it is only fair to note that Israeli settlement in the West Bank began shortly after the 1967 Six-Day War under left-wing governments that coveted parts of the West Bank, and has not stopped since.
For a look at an attempt to sketch out a future Palestinian state in the West Bank with its hundreds of Israeli settlements and outposts, see the first Trump administration’s Abraham Accords-linked proposals from 2020 with their multitude of bridges and tunnels designed to link up hapless Palestinian enclaves carved up by the settlements.
Q. The West Bank-Gaza divide?
A. The 1994 Oslo Accords generated maps in which a projected Palestinian state overcomes the territorial gap between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, some 35-40 kilometers of Israeli territory, with an elevated highway, a train, and/or a tunnel, together with a variety of extraterritorial rights for Palestinian travelers. Even in the Oslo heydays, nothing of this sort was ever seriously attempted.
Yet two-state solution advocates can logically argue that if Gaza and Judea, i.e., the Gaza Strip and the southern West Bank, can be linked both virtually and through creative engineering within a two-state solution, then so can Samaria and Judea, i.e., the northern and southern West Bank, even if severed by Israel. In other words, lack of territorial continuity does not have to be the obstacle that precludes a two-state solution, particularly when measured over such short distances.
Q. Links to the Arab world? To the rest of the world?
A. Whether divided or whole, the West Bank needs a territorial link to Jordan, i.e., to the Arab world of which it is a part. Yet a succession of Israeli governments, including left-center ones, have argued over the years that for security reasons — as long as Iran and parts of the Arab world are hostile — the Jordan Valley must remain under Israeli military control. At least the Gaza Strip part of a Palestinian state would have a land border with Egypt as well as access to the sea.
What about an international airport? Here too, Israel has consistently argued that because Israel and Palestine would in effect occupy the same geographic space, Israel, with its security needs, must retain control over Palestinian airspace, meaning that Israelis would be stationed in the Palestine Airport control tower.
(Incidentally, it is fair and reasonable to assume that a Palestinian state, whether divided in two or into three parts, would want to make broad use of planes and helicopters to bridge physical communications gaps.)
Q. Bottom line?
A. A Swiss cheese-like map of a future Palestinian state was the highly-flawed vision of the first Trump administration. If Netanyahu’s scheme for E-1 survives Israel’s election and becomes reality, the second Trump administration will have to dust off its earlier maps and draw some more lines linking bits and pieces of Palestine.
That’s the bad news. The good news is that, despite obstacles new and old, it will still be possible.
And the real news is that this is entirely a hypothetical discussion, staged against a dismally depressing array of Middle East realities and international — particularly American — mismanagement and lack of understanding. Even based on the original Oslo Accords of 1994, Palestine was destined to be a geographically split state. Such geopolitical creations have rarely fared well. Recall pre-WWII Danzig and Cold War-era Pakistan/Bangladesh. (And look closely at the map of the Persian Gulf and note that a split fragment of Oman is at the center of the current Hormuz drama with Iran.)
Netanyahu’s E-1 construction decision is designed to remind his electoral base that he is a hero of Jewish superiority in the Land of Israel. It reminds the international community that he is constantly sabotaging peace. And it reminds liberals everywhere how he is busy unraveling the fabric of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.
Yossi Alpher is an independent security analyst. He is the former director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, a former senior official with the Mossad, and a former IDF intelligence officer.
