13/04/2005
Palestine Media Center – PMC

As Israel’s Premier continued to defy the US President’s warnings to freeze all Jewish settlement expansion in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) as stipulated under the “roadmap” peace plan, Palestinians voiced their anger at Bush’s “legitimization” of Israel’s settlement activity as work on expanding the colony of “Maale Adumim” in eastern Jerusalem continued unabated.

Workers were hard at work on Tuesday expanding the illegal West Bank Jewish settlement of “Maale Adumim” in eastern Jerusalem.

The only overt disagreement between Bush and Sharon during their summit meting in Texas on Monday was on the Israeli plan to build 3,500 settler housing units between “Maaleh Adumim” and Jerusalem.

Bush publicly reminded Sharon three times at their summit in Texas that Israel was obliged to freeze all settlement activity, according to Israel’s “roadmap” obligations.

Sharon said that Israelis “are very much interested (in having) contiguity between Maaleh Adumim and Jerusalem,” adding that: “The major Israeli population centers in (the West Bank) Judea and Samaria will be part of the State of Israel.”

“Maale Adumim” is a biblical name meaning “red cliffs.” The Wall Israel is building on occupied Palestinian land puts “Maaleh Adumim” on the “Israeli” side, dividing occupied east Jerusalem further from the West Bank.

Israeli government spokesman Avi Pazner said Tuesday the decision to expand the settlement was taken in light of an agreement laid out in a letter given by Bush to Sharon on April 14 last year, in which the US President signaled his clear support for Israel to hold on to large West Bank settlement blocs within the framework of a final status agreement.

Speaking to the French daily Le Figaro, Pazner said Bush’s remarks at the summit were unlikely to stop the expansion of “Maaleh Adumim” or stand in the way of plans to link the settlement with Jerusalem, which lies some five kilometers (three miles) away.

“Sharon explained that what we are doing is within the agreement we have with the United States,” he said, admitting there was “slight disagreement on the interpretation” of the accord.

PM Qurei: We Categorically Refuse Jewish Settlement Blocs

Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmad Qurei said Tuesday the Palestinians categorically reject the continued presence of large Jewish settlement blocs inside the occupied West Bank after Washington reportedly agreed to endorse their retention by Israel.

At a joint press conference with Sharon on Monday, Bush said that, “changes on the ground, including existing major Israeli population centers, must be taken into account in any final status negotiations.”

“New realities on the ground make it unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949. It is realistic to expect that any final status agreement will be achieved only on the basis of mutually agreed changes that reflect these realities. That’s the American view. While the United States will not prejudice the outcome of final status negotiations, those changes on the ground, including existing major Israeli population centers, must be taken into account in any final status negotiations,” Bush elaborated.

Bush is neither entitled nor mandated by any Palestinian to cede Palestinian land and legitimize its annexation by the occupying power of Israel.

“We categorically refuse these settlement blocs, especially those around Jerusalem, such as ‘Maaleh Adumim’ and ‘Pisgat Zeev,’” Qurei told reporters at the opening of the weekly cabinet meeting.

“This is Palestinian land which was occupied in 1967. The results of negotiations on the final status (of the Occupied Territories) should not be determined in advance.”

Qurei, however, took heart from comments by the US president when Bush warned Sharon against carrying through his plan to build 3,500 new settler homes at “Maaleh Adumim” in contravention of the “roadmap” peace plan.

“We hope that the Israeli government will submit to this without delay,” he said.

US Has to Define What it Means by a Palestinian State

Qurei told reporters in the West Bank city of Ramallah that while the US Administration is speaking about a Palestinian state, it has failed to define what it meant exactly by that state.

“Doesn’t a state mean security, borders, stability and the non-existence of settlements?” Qurei asked.

“President Bush’s remarks about Israel’s right to maintain the Jewish settlements does not serve the peace process and cannot possibly lead to a just settlement,” he added.

He urged the US Administration and the Arab world to consider Jerusalem “as a red line and forbid the expansion of settlements around it.”

Palestinian Officials Criticize Ambiguous US Policy

Similarly, two senior Palestinian officials criticized Washington’s ambiguous policy.

Chief Palestinian Negotiator Saeb Erakat told CNN Tuesday that he thinks talks between Bush and Sharon demonstrate that the Palestinians are not being viewed by the United States in the way they should.

He told reporters that if the US is going to “go back to the old broken record of blaming the Palestinian leaders as they did [in the time of late Palestinian leader Yaser] Arafat, saying that we are not doing enough, I think we are doomed. That must stop.”

Erakat called on the Quartet to send monitors to Israel, “so they can be my judge and Israel’s judge.”

Palestinian Minister of Civil Affairs Mohammad Dahlan also criticized the ambiguity of the US policy and said that the Bush administration is ridiculing the Palestine National Authority (PNA).

In an interview with a newspaper from the United Arab Emirate, Dahlan charged that Washington has no definitive policy towards the PNA, and is not supporting the Palestinian leadership as it said it would.

Meanwhile, member of the PLO Executive Committee Hanna Amira, the Islamic Resistance Movement “Hamas,” member of Fatah’s Central Committee Abbas Zaki, leader of the People’s Party Bassam Al-Salhi, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and several other Palestinian political and national leaders on Tuesday rejected the US President’s policy on Israeli settlements.

Peace Now: Expansion of ‘Maale Adumim’ Continuing

On Tuesday, finishing touches were being put on new settler apartment buildings at the edge of “Maaleh Adumim,” occupied by 30,000 illegal Jewish settlers.

Large cranes carried equipment on and off the buildings, bulldozers removed rubble, workers in yellow hard hats put down cement bricks, and the sound of banging hammers echoed in the air.

A tour of “Maaleh Adumim,” organized on Tuesday by the Israeli settlement watchdog Peace Now, showed that Israel is already clearly flouting the roadmap’s call to freeze all settlement activity.

In an area known as E1 on the northwestern outskirts of “Maaleh Adumim,” a project to build another road alongside an existing highway from Jerusalem to the Dead Sea is well under way. Workmen have already cut the surface of around two kilometers of the road, and covered some 300 meters (yards) with tarmac.

“Yesterday, (Israeli Defense Minister) Shaul Mofaz told us that there were still four more administrative stages to go through before any construction work could begin,” said Ran Cohen, a deputy for the left-wing Yahad party during the tour.

“This road is proof that construction has already begun.”

Cohen said the expansion of “Maale Adumim” was clearly designed to cut the southern West Bank off from the north, thus imperiling the much-talked of territorial contiguity which all sides say is needed for a viable Palestinian state.

“The extension of ‘Maaleh Adumim’ in the area between Jerusalem and the settlement will cut off the circulation between the north and south of the West Bank,” he said.

According to Yuli Tamir, a deputy for the center-left Labor, such an extension risks upsetting a political consensus on the left and right within Israel to include ‘Maaleh Adumim” inside the borders of Israel in any final status agreement.

“By trying to swallow too much all at once, Sharon risks calling into question the future of everyone in ‘Maaleh Adumim’. It is irresponsible,” said Tamir, whose party is the second largest in the governing coalition.

In the east of the settlement, work is also continuing on a new illegal settler neighborhood so-far known merely as 07 where builders were putting the finishing touches to a series of three to five-storey houses which are soon to be inhabited by buyers taking advantage of cheap prices so close to Jerusalem.

“These places are going for half the price that one would find in Jerusalem and it’s only 10 minutes from the center of town,” said Cohen.

“Any project of this kind will only maintain the Palestinians’ sense of distrust and undermine (Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas) Abu Mazen at the hands of his own people,” he added.

“This will prevent the Palestinians from thinking that there is an Israeli partner (in the peace process), encourages terrorism and bolsters those who argue that there is no possibility of any agreement.”

Secretary-General of the Palestinian Cabinet Samir Hleila told the “Voice of Palestine” radio station on Monday that Israel does not want a Palestinian partner in the peace process and insists to move forward unilaterally.