The project, advanced through an agreement between the Housing Ministry and the Mateh Binyamin Regional Council, is officially billed as a major expansion of the Adam (Geva Binyamin) settlement, but is planned, marketed and serviced as if it were a new Jerusalem neighborhood.
Roughly 2,800 to 3,000 housing units are slated to be built on around 500 dunams of land between the Palestinian towns of Hizma and a‑Ram, in a corridor just beyond the current municipal line yet directly adjacent to Jerusalem’s Neve Yaakov neighborhood.
Under the deal, the state will invest about 120 million shekels in infrastructure, public institutions and roads for the new neighborhood, including an access road that starts inside Neve Yaakov, crosses the Green Line and returns to Jerusalem, effectively stitching the West Bank project into the capital’s urban and service grid.
On paper, the land will remain under the authority of the Mateh Binyamin settlement council rather than being formally annexed to Jerusalem, allowing the government to argue that there has been no official change to the city’s municipal borders.
Israeli officials and settler leaders present the move as a necessary answer to the housing crunch in and around Jerusalem and as a step toward “strengthening settlement continuity” around the city.
The head of the Mateh Binyamin council, Israel Ganz, welcomed the agreement as the realization of a long‑standing “settlement vision” that will enable thousands of new homes and an upgraded quality of life for residents in the area.
Critics inside Israel, however, warn that the plan represents a watershed shift. The anti‑settlement watchdog Peace Now said that “for the first time since 1967” the government is using the guise of expanding an existing settlement to carry out de facto annexation of West Bank land to Jerusalem, arguing that the project will function in every respect as a Jerusalem neighborhood while erasing the Green Line on the ground.
Opposition lawmakers have demanded clarifications from the Housing Ministry on whether the new residents will receive Jerusalem municipal services and what this implies for the city’s borders. Labour MK Gilad Kariv submitted an urgent parliamentary query warning that the move would inflame tensions, damage Jerusalem’s international standing and further entrench Israel’s control over occupied territory without public debate or a formal annexation decision.
Palestinian leaders describe the project as part of a broader strategy to surround and fragment occupied East Jerusalem. The Jerusalem Governorate said in a statement that the plan aims to “expand the occupation municipality’s borders beyond the Green Line” under a “misleading” label of settlement expansion, and accused Israel of trying to impose new sovereignty facts that would sever East Jerusalem’s ties to the rest of the West Bank.
Local Palestinian officials and analysts see the Adam–Neve Yaakov axis, together with projects at Atarot/Qalandiya to the north and in the E1 area to the east, as an integrated attempt to encircle Palestinian neighborhoods and prevent the emergence of a viable Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem.
They warn that closing this northern corridor will tighten Israeli control over the approaches to Jerusalem from Ramallah and accelerate what many Palestinians call the “Greater Jerusalem” project. The move comes against the backdrop of a wider package of Israeli measures to deepen its grip on the West Bank, including decisions to restart land registration under Israeli auspices and expand enforcement powers in areas that were meant under the Oslo Accords to fall under Palestinian Authority jurisdiction.
Human rights groups and legal experts say these steps together amount to a policy of gradual de facto annexation, shifting from temporary occupation to permanent Israeli rule without an official declaration. Regionally and internationally, the plan is feeding mounting concern that Israel is closing the door on a two‑state solution. The European Union has reiterated that all Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem, are illegal under international law and that it “will not recognise any changes to the pre‑1967 borders, including in Jerusalem, other than those agreed by both sides.” Recent EU statements on Israel’s broader settlement drive have described new construction and administrative measures in the West Bank as clear violations of international law, urging Israel to reverse course and explicitly rejecting any form of annexation.
UN Secretary‑General António Guterres, through his spokesperson, has similarly condemned Israeli decisions to expand settlements and tighten control over occupied territory, stressing that such steps “have no legal validity” and undermine the prospects of a negotiated peace. The Trump administration, while restating the president’s opposition to outright annexation of the West Bank, has so far refrained from directly condemning specific measures that expand Israel’s effective control, a posture diplomats and analysts say gives Israel political space to proceed with incremental changes like the Adam project. A joint statement by a group of Muslim‑majority states responding to the wider package of Israeli moves warned that attempts to impose “unlawful sovereignty” and entrench settlement activity threaten regional stability and could jeopardize normalization efforts.
Beyond the diplomatic fallout, the implications on the ground are stark.
By extending Jerusalem’s built‑up area deeper into the West Bank and narrowing the remaining Palestinian corridor north of the city, the new neighborhood would further complicate any future effort to draw a border that leaves East Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian state – a pillar of most international peace proposals over the past three decades.