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Peace Process

Jerusalem suburb fears evacuation


By Ryan Jones
September 12, 2005

The Jerusalem suburb of Ma'aleh Adumim, the largest ?West Bank? Jewish settlement, has moved back to center stage internationally amid reports of plans to push forward with a new neighborhood linking it to the capital.

Washington has issued statements strongly opposing Israel's intention to build 3,000 new Jewish homes on the barren connecting hillside known as ?E1,? despite President George W. Bush's purported willingness to back continued Israeli sovereignty over the area as part of any final peace agreement with the PLO.

Now Likud officials in Ma'aleh Adumim are warning that if the E1 project is not implemented shortly, their town could soon, under intense international pressure, suffer the same fate as Jewish Gaza.

?If there is no link to Jerusalem, Ma'aleh Adumim is liable to become a second Gush Katif, and this is not a political or partisan issue,? city council member Rafi Ben Hur told Ha'aretz.

The new neighborhood would not only make Ma'aleh Adumim, which already has over 30,000 residents, all but impossible to uproot, but would also solidify Israel's hold on a united Jerusalem.

But while the project sits in limbo under the Sharon government, Ma'aleh Adumim city council members point to worrying Arab construction, much of it illegal, aimed at cutting the settlement off from Jerusalem.

?This worries us very, very much because we are liable to reach the situation where the State of Israel tells us to leave because there are too many Arabs around. Just like they said to the settlers in Gush Katif,? Ben Hur said.

For that reason, 80 percent of Likud members in Ma'aleh Adumim voted against ?disengagement? in an internal party referendum last year. Sharon pledged to abide by the results of that poll, but brushed them aside after his policies were rejected by a wide margin.

Now ?the Americans will be the ones to determine whether we will have a future in Ma'aleh Adumim,? council member Zadok Oshani said, evoking what Ha'aretz columnist Daniel Ben Simon described as worried concurrence from his colleagues.

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