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Israel freezes plan to link Jerusalem, big settlement
By Mark Heinrich JERUSALEM, Sept 2 (Reuters) - Israel has frozen plans to build 1,000 new settler homes in the occupied West Bank near Jerusalem, a minister said on Friday, heeding U.S. opposition to a move Palestinians fear would deny them a viable state. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who removed settlers from Gaza last month, has long wanted to build a link between Jerusalem and Israel's biggest settlement Maale Adumim despite U.S. concern this could cripple any future Middle East peace push. But Israeli officials recently signalled that the so-called "E1" plan was on hold and his deputy publicly confirmed it. "The state of Israel has committed itself to freeze the building. As such we would be acting in an irresponsible manner if we would do otherwise," Vice Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told the Jerusalem Post in an interview. He made clear the disputed "E1" undertaking, which could largely cut the West Bank in two and seal it off from Arab East Jerusalem, had been suspended under U.S. pressure.
But Olmert said Israel would still try to salvage the E1 project in the end, despite a U.S.-devised peace plan requiring Israel to halt settlement growth that might pre-empt the emergence of a geographically contiguous Palestinian state. "It is clear we will not do anything behind the Americans' backs ... (But) when the conditions are ripe, we will raise the issue with the Americans again," he told the newspaper. "It is absolutely clear that at a certain point in the future Israel will create continuity between Jerusalem and Maale Adumim, and so there is not even an argument that in the end we will have to build the project." Israel captured holy Jerusalem's eastern sector, along with the West Bank and Gaza, in a 1967 war. The E1 project in what is now empty desert would cement Israel's claim to Jerusalem as its indivisible capital, not recognised internationally PALESTINIAN WELCOME, WARNING Palestinian Planning Minister Ghassan al-Khatib, asked about Olmert's remarks, said the "promise to freeze construction at Maale Adumim is a positive step if Israel sticks to it". "Israel now stands at a crossroads: either build on the momentum created by the Gaza disengagement and kick-start road map talks, or expand West Bank colonisation to 'compensate' Gaza settlers. The latter path will push the sides back into the cycle of violence and confrontation," Khatib told Reuters. Israel is finalising plans to build a police station on the sensitive E1 tract, a step likely to anger Palestinians. Sharon scrapped all 21 settlements in Gaza and four of 120 in the West Bank under his plan to defuse conflict with Palestinians seeking a state spanning the two territories. But he says Israel will never cede much larger West Bank settlement blocs, such as Maale Adumim, with more than 20 times the number of Jews there were in tiny coastal Gaza. Palestinians fear Sharon's logic for "disengagement" was to divert foreign scrutiny from West Bank settlements to development efforts in Gaza The United States lauded Sharon's unilateral "disengagement" as a potential springboard, along with a six-month-old ceasefire, to a "road map" process towards a Palestinian state alongside a secure Israel. But talks remain beyond the horizon. Israel rules them out before the Palestinian Authority disarms militants. Palestinian leaders balk at such a step while settlers keep flowing into the West Bank, with the number of arrivals this year outstripping those who left Gaza last month. Pre-election power struggles on both sides also militate against viable peacemaking anytime soon.
Sharon is talking tough on
settlement blocs to counter a bid to topple him by rightist hardliners in his
own party over a pullout. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas faces a tough
challenge from Hamas militants in a January parliamentary election. He wants to
co-opt rather than try to crush Hamas. |
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Fri
2 Sep 2005 