Israel may be about to destroy its greatest diplomatic victory

The E1 project has put the UAE’s relationship with Israel – and the future of the Abraham Accords – under growing strain The joint statement issued by the foreign ministers of eight Arab and Muslim countries was one of the clearest diplomatic signals of recent weeks.

Saudi Arabia, Türkiye, Pakistan, Qatar, Egypt, Jordan, Indonesia, and the United Arab Emirates did more than condemn Israel’s E1 settlement project.

They demanded that the plan be halted, the decisions approving it reversed, and sanctions considered against individuals and entities involved in settlement expansion.

The signatories also reaffirmed that an independent Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital, remains the only viable path toward a lasting settlement, according to an official statement released by the UAE Foreign Ministry.

This was not just another communiqué intended to register concern over unfolding events.

The reference to possible sanctions suggests that even the region’s more cautious governments are beginning to adopt a tougher stance.

Israeli leaders apparently assume that normalization with certain Arab countries has become irreversible and that their objections can therefore be safely ignored.

The E1 project, however, may reveal just how badly mistaken that calculation is.

The plan calls for the construction of more than 3,400 homes in the strategically important corridor between East Jerusalem and the Israeli settlement of Ma’ale Adumim.

If implemented, it would effectively split the West Bank into northern and southern sections while cutting East Jerusalem off from the main territory of any future Palestinian state.

In other words, E1 would reshape not only the demographic but also the political geography of the conflict.

This is not a routine expansion of an existing settlement.

It is a step that could deprive the “two states for two peoples” formula of its territorial foundation.

Israel’s far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, has made no attempt to conceal the project’s political purpose, openly presenting it as a way to finally “bury” the idea of Palestinian statehood.