Zarathustra
11-21-2005, 01:04 PM
Maaleh Adumim Expansion Shapes Jewish 'Greater Jerusalem'
Outraged Palestinians Urge Bush, Blair to Intervene Directly
22/03/2005
Palestine Media Center – PMC
Israel confirmed on Monday a settlement expansion plan to build 3,500 settler housing units in the illegal colony of Maaleh Adumim that would encircle the occupied east Jerusalem with a “Jewish Greater Jerusalem,” in a move that have enraged the Palestinians who warned that the Israeli plan would “close the door of peace” and urged US President George W. Bush “to intervene directly,” otherwise nothing will be left for Palestinian – Israeli negotiations.
Israeli security sources say the statutory procedures relating to the plan to establish two new colonies between Ma'aleh Adumim and Jerusalem “will be completed within a few weeks,” Aluf Benn wrote in Haaretz on Tuesday.
“The dream of a biblical Greater Israel has already collapsed but the idea of a Greater Jerusalem is still very much alive,” the BBC said on Monday.
Palestinians have reacted angrily.
“Jerusalem is in real danger. If 3,500 homes are added to Maale Adumim and it is surrounded by the Apartheid Wall as planned, it will threaten the fate of all Jerusalem,” Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmad Qurei told reporters after a cabinet meeting in Gaza City Monday.
Qurei warned the “entire world of the danger these kind of unilateral Israeli measures have on the peace process.”
Separately Palestinian Planning Minister Ghassan al-Khatib warned that: “By expanding settlements in the West Bank, Israel gives the impression that it intends to exchange Gaza for a ‘Greater Israel’.”
“Israel is responsible for any consequences resulting from this continuous violation of the roadmap,” Al-Khatib said. “I don’t think the Palestinian leadership and people can tolerate this.”
Erakat Urges Bush, Blair and 93 World Leaders to Intervene
Saeb Erakat, the chief Palestinian peace negotiator, has written to British Prime Minister Tony Blair and 95 other world leaders, including the US president, urging them to stop Israel expanding the settlement of Ma'aleh Adumim, telling The Independent on Tuesday that the Israeli plan would “close the door to peace.”
“I really urge President Bush to intervene directly and prevent Israel from doing this,” said Erakat. “The land that is supposed to be for a future Palestinian state is being eaten up. With this settlement building, and the Wall that is being built, the question for President Bush is: What is left to be negotiated?”
Erakat said the Israeli plan poses a threat to the peace process and is “a severe violation of understandings we have reached with Israel.” He was referring to the understandings reached between Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh on February 8.
“The decision of the Israeli government and its defense minister to build more than 3,500 homes in Maale Adumin sabotages all efforts seeking to get the peace process back on track,” Erakat told AFP.
“The Israeli government wants to determine Jerusalem's fate by presenting the settlements and wall as a fait accompli,” he added.
“We ask the Quartet and American President George Bush: what happened to the two-state vision and how can we have peace while settlements and the Wall continue to be built?” Erakat asked.
The so-called Quartet of the European Union, Russia, the United Nations and the United States drafted the UN-adopted “roadmap” peace plan, which had sought to freeze settlement activity and create an independent Palestinian state by 2005.
Mark Regev, Israel’s foreign ministry spokesman, claimed Monday that over the past five years there was “an international consensus” that Ma'aleh Adumim is going “to stay inside Israeli sovereign territory.”
Erakat refuted Regev’s claim. “We never accepted Ma'aleh Adumim would remain part of Israel,” he said. Settlement expansion and the extension of Israel's West Bank Apartheid Wall, he insisted, pre-empted and prejudged final-status negotiations.
Peace Now: Biggest Obstacle to Two-state Solution
In practical terms, the expansion of Maale Adumim creates two major problems:
First, Palestinians living in east Jerusalem and nearby areas will be effectively boxed in, with no room to grow.
“This project may be one of the biggest obstacles to reaching a two-state solution,” said Yariv Oppenheimer of Peace Now, an Israeli group that monitors settlements. “This will cut off Jerusalem to the east with Jewish settlements.”
Also, an expanded Maale Adumim would serve as a barrier between the northern and southern parts of the West Bank.
“These areas will never be transferred to the Palestinian Authority,” an official from Ariel Sharon's office told AFP.
“We're not talking about rogue outposts, but perfectly legal settlements where we will continue to build homes, administrative offices and industrial areas in keeping with our needs,” added the official.
In each of the last three years, Israel has initiated construction of about 1,400 new settler housing units in the West Bank, according to Peace Now.
Bethlehem-Ramallah Road Planned to Bypass Maale Adumim
Israeli officials tried to sound sensitive to the international demand for a contiguous Palestinian state.
“It (the expansion) will not deprive the Palestinians of territorial continuity in their future state thanks to a road being built linking Bethlehem to Ramallah, which will bypass Maale Adumim,” the Israeli official said.
Another Israeli source confirmed that Sharon had ordered the building of a road to bypass the area and link the Palestinian-ruled cities to the north and south of Jerusalem, namely Ramallah and Bethlehem.
“The Prime Minister is thinking ahead, to giving the Palestinians territorial contiguity,” the source indicated.
Israel Confiscates More Palestinian Land
Confirming on Monday that the Israeli “defense” Shaul Mofaz approved the expansion of Maaleh Adumim, Ministry spokeswoman Shiri Eden said the construction is part of an overall development plan for the settlement approved by the government in 1999. The plan's stages have to be approved separately.
The plan was deposited with the West Bank's Supreme Planning Council in February, and now expects the completion of the final legal touchups.
The plan will then require final approval by the Supreme Planning Council ahead of its implementation.
Mofaz and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon have also approved an initiative to declare as state land additional sections of the Palestinian-owned “Area A-1.”
The A-1 plan comes to expand the town of Ma'aleh Adumim toward the northeast, in the direction of Jerusalem's northerly neighborhoods.
The two projected colonies proposed the construction of a total of 3,500 new houses to be built on a strip of territory named E1, which has been declared state land, between Ma'aleh Adumim and Jerusalem.
The E1 corridor, a 13,000 dunam (3,250 acre) stretch west of Ma'aleh Adumim could link up to Jerusalem, creating Israeli territorial contiguity.
Israeli building in E1 would cut the West Bank in two for perhaps two thirds of the distance between Jerusalem and the Jordanian border – anathema to the Palestinians and much of the international community.
E1 was initiated as an Israeli “building project” more than a decade ago, with plans for 3,500 homes, by the late Yitzhak Rabin and his then-housing minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, within the framework of a wider “Greater Jerusalem Plan” to close the gaps between Jerusalem and the surrounding illegal Jewish settlements.
Washington Said to Approve Israeli Plan
The Israelis, however, believe that they have Washington's support for constructing thousands of new settler homes in the Jerusalem area.
A letter from President Bush to Prime Minister Sharon on April 14 last year said that it was “unrealistic” to expect that a final peace deal with the Palestinians would see Israel return fully to its 1967 borders.
Raanan Gissin, Sharon's media adviser, said the Maaleh Adumim construction did not violate the “roadmap” because Israel reserved the right in its provisional acceptance of the peace plan two years ago to continue building in settlements under certain conditions.
“In any event, Maaleh Adumim is not negotiable. Maaleh Adumim is going to be an integral part of Jerusalem in any future agreement,” Gissin said.
Bush, in a speech made last month in Belgium, said Israel must “ensure that a new Palestinian state is truly viable, with contiguous territory on the West Bank.”
“A state of scattered territories will not work,” Bush said.
More than 220,000 illegal Jewish settlers live in the West Bank since the are was occupied by Israel in 1967 and another 200,000 in east Jerusalem among more than two million Palestinians.
The US State Department said Monday Israel must live up to its part of the “roadmap” and stop settlement activity in the West Bank.
Although department deputy spokesman Adam Ereli did not directly comment on reports Israel will build an additional 3,500 settler homes east of Jerusalem, he said the United States urges both Israel and the Palestinians to live up to their commitments to the “roadmap.”
“The roadmap calls for an end to settlement activity, and action against terrorist infrastructure,” he said. “Those are important commitments that both sides have made, and that we look forward to both sides following through on.”
He said Washington would look into the reports of the new settlements, adding it's “something we're regularly engaged with the government of Israel on.”
PMC © All Rights Reserved
http://www.palestine-pmc.com/details.asp?cat=1&id=829
Outraged Palestinians Urge Bush, Blair to Intervene Directly
22/03/2005
Palestine Media Center – PMC
Israel confirmed on Monday a settlement expansion plan to build 3,500 settler housing units in the illegal colony of Maaleh Adumim that would encircle the occupied east Jerusalem with a “Jewish Greater Jerusalem,” in a move that have enraged the Palestinians who warned that the Israeli plan would “close the door of peace” and urged US President George W. Bush “to intervene directly,” otherwise nothing will be left for Palestinian – Israeli negotiations.
Israeli security sources say the statutory procedures relating to the plan to establish two new colonies between Ma'aleh Adumim and Jerusalem “will be completed within a few weeks,” Aluf Benn wrote in Haaretz on Tuesday.
“The dream of a biblical Greater Israel has already collapsed but the idea of a Greater Jerusalem is still very much alive,” the BBC said on Monday.
Palestinians have reacted angrily.
“Jerusalem is in real danger. If 3,500 homes are added to Maale Adumim and it is surrounded by the Apartheid Wall as planned, it will threaten the fate of all Jerusalem,” Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmad Qurei told reporters after a cabinet meeting in Gaza City Monday.
Qurei warned the “entire world of the danger these kind of unilateral Israeli measures have on the peace process.”
Separately Palestinian Planning Minister Ghassan al-Khatib warned that: “By expanding settlements in the West Bank, Israel gives the impression that it intends to exchange Gaza for a ‘Greater Israel’.”
“Israel is responsible for any consequences resulting from this continuous violation of the roadmap,” Al-Khatib said. “I don’t think the Palestinian leadership and people can tolerate this.”
Erakat Urges Bush, Blair and 93 World Leaders to Intervene
Saeb Erakat, the chief Palestinian peace negotiator, has written to British Prime Minister Tony Blair and 95 other world leaders, including the US president, urging them to stop Israel expanding the settlement of Ma'aleh Adumim, telling The Independent on Tuesday that the Israeli plan would “close the door to peace.”
“I really urge President Bush to intervene directly and prevent Israel from doing this,” said Erakat. “The land that is supposed to be for a future Palestinian state is being eaten up. With this settlement building, and the Wall that is being built, the question for President Bush is: What is left to be negotiated?”
Erakat said the Israeli plan poses a threat to the peace process and is “a severe violation of understandings we have reached with Israel.” He was referring to the understandings reached between Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh on February 8.
“The decision of the Israeli government and its defense minister to build more than 3,500 homes in Maale Adumin sabotages all efforts seeking to get the peace process back on track,” Erakat told AFP.
“The Israeli government wants to determine Jerusalem's fate by presenting the settlements and wall as a fait accompli,” he added.
“We ask the Quartet and American President George Bush: what happened to the two-state vision and how can we have peace while settlements and the Wall continue to be built?” Erakat asked.
The so-called Quartet of the European Union, Russia, the United Nations and the United States drafted the UN-adopted “roadmap” peace plan, which had sought to freeze settlement activity and create an independent Palestinian state by 2005.
Mark Regev, Israel’s foreign ministry spokesman, claimed Monday that over the past five years there was “an international consensus” that Ma'aleh Adumim is going “to stay inside Israeli sovereign territory.”
Erakat refuted Regev’s claim. “We never accepted Ma'aleh Adumim would remain part of Israel,” he said. Settlement expansion and the extension of Israel's West Bank Apartheid Wall, he insisted, pre-empted and prejudged final-status negotiations.
Peace Now: Biggest Obstacle to Two-state Solution
In practical terms, the expansion of Maale Adumim creates two major problems:
First, Palestinians living in east Jerusalem and nearby areas will be effectively boxed in, with no room to grow.
“This project may be one of the biggest obstacles to reaching a two-state solution,” said Yariv Oppenheimer of Peace Now, an Israeli group that monitors settlements. “This will cut off Jerusalem to the east with Jewish settlements.”
Also, an expanded Maale Adumim would serve as a barrier between the northern and southern parts of the West Bank.
“These areas will never be transferred to the Palestinian Authority,” an official from Ariel Sharon's office told AFP.
“We're not talking about rogue outposts, but perfectly legal settlements where we will continue to build homes, administrative offices and industrial areas in keeping with our needs,” added the official.
In each of the last three years, Israel has initiated construction of about 1,400 new settler housing units in the West Bank, according to Peace Now.
Bethlehem-Ramallah Road Planned to Bypass Maale Adumim
Israeli officials tried to sound sensitive to the international demand for a contiguous Palestinian state.
“It (the expansion) will not deprive the Palestinians of territorial continuity in their future state thanks to a road being built linking Bethlehem to Ramallah, which will bypass Maale Adumim,” the Israeli official said.
Another Israeli source confirmed that Sharon had ordered the building of a road to bypass the area and link the Palestinian-ruled cities to the north and south of Jerusalem, namely Ramallah and Bethlehem.
“The Prime Minister is thinking ahead, to giving the Palestinians territorial contiguity,” the source indicated.
Israel Confiscates More Palestinian Land
Confirming on Monday that the Israeli “defense” Shaul Mofaz approved the expansion of Maaleh Adumim, Ministry spokeswoman Shiri Eden said the construction is part of an overall development plan for the settlement approved by the government in 1999. The plan's stages have to be approved separately.
The plan was deposited with the West Bank's Supreme Planning Council in February, and now expects the completion of the final legal touchups.
The plan will then require final approval by the Supreme Planning Council ahead of its implementation.
Mofaz and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon have also approved an initiative to declare as state land additional sections of the Palestinian-owned “Area A-1.”
The A-1 plan comes to expand the town of Ma'aleh Adumim toward the northeast, in the direction of Jerusalem's northerly neighborhoods.
The two projected colonies proposed the construction of a total of 3,500 new houses to be built on a strip of territory named E1, which has been declared state land, between Ma'aleh Adumim and Jerusalem.
The E1 corridor, a 13,000 dunam (3,250 acre) stretch west of Ma'aleh Adumim could link up to Jerusalem, creating Israeli territorial contiguity.
Israeli building in E1 would cut the West Bank in two for perhaps two thirds of the distance between Jerusalem and the Jordanian border – anathema to the Palestinians and much of the international community.
E1 was initiated as an Israeli “building project” more than a decade ago, with plans for 3,500 homes, by the late Yitzhak Rabin and his then-housing minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, within the framework of a wider “Greater Jerusalem Plan” to close the gaps between Jerusalem and the surrounding illegal Jewish settlements.
Washington Said to Approve Israeli Plan
The Israelis, however, believe that they have Washington's support for constructing thousands of new settler homes in the Jerusalem area.
A letter from President Bush to Prime Minister Sharon on April 14 last year said that it was “unrealistic” to expect that a final peace deal with the Palestinians would see Israel return fully to its 1967 borders.
Raanan Gissin, Sharon's media adviser, said the Maaleh Adumim construction did not violate the “roadmap” because Israel reserved the right in its provisional acceptance of the peace plan two years ago to continue building in settlements under certain conditions.
“In any event, Maaleh Adumim is not negotiable. Maaleh Adumim is going to be an integral part of Jerusalem in any future agreement,” Gissin said.
Bush, in a speech made last month in Belgium, said Israel must “ensure that a new Palestinian state is truly viable, with contiguous territory on the West Bank.”
“A state of scattered territories will not work,” Bush said.
More than 220,000 illegal Jewish settlers live in the West Bank since the are was occupied by Israel in 1967 and another 200,000 in east Jerusalem among more than two million Palestinians.
The US State Department said Monday Israel must live up to its part of the “roadmap” and stop settlement activity in the West Bank.
Although department deputy spokesman Adam Ereli did not directly comment on reports Israel will build an additional 3,500 settler homes east of Jerusalem, he said the United States urges both Israel and the Palestinians to live up to their commitments to the “roadmap.”
“The roadmap calls for an end to settlement activity, and action against terrorist infrastructure,” he said. “Those are important commitments that both sides have made, and that we look forward to both sides following through on.”
He said Washington would look into the reports of the new settlements, adding it's “something we're regularly engaged with the government of Israel on.”
PMC © All Rights Reserved
http://www.palestine-pmc.com/details.asp?cat=1&id=829