Israel's E1 Settlement Proves It Was Never About Hamas
Israel's Genocide uses Hamas as an excuse, but Hamas aren't in charge in the West Bank.
For 22 months the world has watched Israel carry out a genocide against the Palestinian people. Tens of thousands have been killed in Gaza, entire neighborhoods have been flattened, and basic survival has been made impossible through siege and starvation.
In the West Bank, military raids, mass arrests, and settler violence have intensified. Against this backdrop, Israel’s approval of the E1 settlement project makes the genocidal intent undeniable. The plan for 3,400 settler homes in the corridor between East Jerusalem and Ma’ale Adumim is not about security or Hamas. It is about the destruction of Palestine as a political and national entity through ethnic cleansing and annexation.
The E1 plan has been one of the most notorious proposals in the history of Israeli settlement expansion. For decades, successive governments avoided pushing it through because it would cut the West Bank in half and obliterate the possibility of a contiguous Palestinian state. International pressure had kept it frozen. That changed on August 20, 2025, when the Higher Planning Council granted final approval.
The project is designed to sever East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank, leaving Ramallah and Bethlehem disconnected. Palestinians would be forced into fragmented enclaves, surrounded by settlement blocs and military zones. Hamas has never controlled the West Bank. The constant invocation of Hamas as justification for Israeli aggression collapses in the face of this settlement. E1 is about colonization and ethnic cleansing, not security.
International condemnation has been swift. The United Nations, the European Union, the UK, and countries like France and Germany have called the move a flagrant violation of international law. UN Secretary-General António Guterres warned that the project “threatens the viability of the two-state solution.” Britain’s Foreign Secretary David Lammy described it as a “flagrant breach of international law.” Jordan called it the death blow to peace.
This is the material execution of ethnic cleansing. Israel is forcibly displacing a people from their land and replacing them with settlers. It is committing the crime of apartheid by enshrining two separate systems of rights and governance on the same soil. It is carrying out acts that fit the definition of genocide under the Genocide Convention: the intent to destroy a people in whole or in part.
For decades, every act of violence, every airstrike, every incursion into Gaza and the West Bank has been justified with the same refrain: Hamas. Israel claimed it could not make peace because of Hamas. It claimed it had to bomb hospitals and schools because of Hamas. It claimed that checkpoints, blockades, and military law were all about Hamas.
Now, with Hamas absent in the West Bank and Gaza reduced to rubble, Israel is pushing forward with a settlement plan that exposes the lie. The E1 settlement has nothing to do with tunnels or rockets. It is about territory and the erasure of Palestine. Hamas was the pretext. Ethnic cleansing is the project. Genocide is the outcome.
While global leaders condemn the E1 settlement on paper, few are willing to take real action. The United States has so far limited itself to muted criticism. Europe issues statements but continues its military and trade ties. Arab governments voice outrage while maintaining their quiet normalization tracks. The condemnation is loud, but the enforcement is nonexistent.
That imbalance allows Israel to move forward. Infrastructure work is expected to begin within months. Housing construction could start in about a year. By then, today’s headlines of international disapproval will have faded and the settlement will be a fact on the ground. International complicity makes the crimes possible.
E1 proves what Palestinians and their allies have long said. The war was never about Hamas. It was never about protecting Israeli civilians from terror. It was never about security at all. It was about conquest, colonization, and the permanent subjugation of an entire people. The mask has slipped and the truth is laid bare.
The E1 settlement is not just a housing project. It is the burial of the two-state solution. It is the physical manifestation of Israel’s policy of ethnic cleansing. It is the legal definition of apartheid. It is evidence of genocide. It proves that invoking Hamas was always a distraction from the real project: the theft of the land and the destruction of the Palestinian people.