Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has refrained from publicly declaring Joe Biden the president-elect of the United States. However, he is certainly preparing to face this reality by rushing to create facts on the ground before the changing of the guard in January 2021.

On Nov. 15, the State of Israel published a construction tender for the Givat Hamatos neighborhood in east Jerusalem to build 1,257 housing units on 10 sites.

About 30 years ago, the State of Israel built a neighborhood there for Ethiopian immigrants who lived in caravans. Over time, the hill became a symbol of the right-wing struggle to build beyond the Green Line, as its location enables Israel to cut Palestinian territorial contiguity in east Jerusalem. The neighborhood will make it impossible to create a Palestinian continuum between Jerusalem and Bethlehem, thus jeopardizing the possibility of establishing two states with the joint capital of Jerusalem.

In the last decade, several construction projects on Givat Hamatos have been unveiled, but all were frozen due to opposition by the Barack Obama administration and on the backdrop of international condemnation.