Greater Israel or Palestinian capital? Tiny strip of land could divide the West Bank

Israel has approved a settlement in the occupied West Bank that would cut the territory in two, and could destroy hopes for a future Palestinian state.

MAALE ADUMIM, West Bank — The sun-starched strip of sand and brush doesn’t look like much, but if you squint, you can almost glimpse the dreamscape of a future Palestinian capital.

“These spare lands mean that we can build our parliament, we can build our future institutions,” Khalil Toufakji, a Palestinian expert on geography and settlement expansion, told NBC News earlier this month as he gestured across the controversial “East 1,” or E1, section of the occupied West Bank.

“If Israel builds here, it means that everything is finished at the same time,” the 76-year-old expert on Israeli settlements said at an overlook in the Israeli settlement of Maale Adumim. “This means that Jerusalem is surrounded from everywhere. … It means that there is no Palestinian geographic continuity between the north and south.”

The almost 5 square miles of land may seem undesirable and the conflict around it theoretical, but both Israel and the Palestinians regard the area’s fate with the same sense of urgency.

So when Israeli authorities approved the development of 3,400 homes last week, ultranationalist lawmakers celebrated what they saw as the death knell for a nascent Palestinian state and an acceleration of plans for Israel to annex the whole of the West Bank.