3,500 New Homes
On West Bank
By Donald Macintyre
and Eric Silver
05 April 2005
The
Independent
Ariel
Sharon, Israel's Prime Minister, has defied international and Palestinian
objections to go ahead with a bitterly controversial plan to expand
the largest Jewish settlement on the West Bank by 3,500 homes.
The leak of Mr Sharon's
remarks yesterday to an Israeli parliamentary committee came as he prepared
to visit President George Bush next week in the US for talks at which
he is expected to seek a green light for the expansion, which would
join up the settlement of Ma'ale Adumim with Jerusalem.
Palestinian leaders,
who swiftly denounced Mr Sharon's restatement of the plan, see the project
to build in the two-mile "E-1" corridor between the existing
settlement and Jerusalem as a further step to isolate the Arab eastern
sector of the city from the West Bank and undermine its viability as
the capital of a future Palestinian state.
A participant at
the meeting between Mr Sharon and the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and
Defence Committee told the Associated Press that Mr Sharon had declared:
"There is a need to carry out construction in E-1. This programme
has been in existence for 10 years. We should definitely move ahead
with it." The source said Mr Sharon had given no date for beginning
the project, for which some preliminary clearance work has already been
carried out. In a concession to the Palestinians, Mr Sharon told the
committee the two sides were discussing the release of a further 400
prisoners.
The Prime Minister's
remarks on Ma'ale Adumim are the clearest signal yet of growing Israeli
confidence that despite initial verbal objections to the expansion project,
the US administration does not intend to make an issue of the plan,
let alone threaten to apply any sanctions to halt it.
The senior Palestinian
negotiator, Saeb Erekat, who has already written to international leaders
urging them to halt the project, said yesterday: "If carried out,
this E-1 project will destroy the peace process and will undermine prospects
for any future negotiations on the final status agreements. We call
upon the US to stop this project if they want to give the peace process
a chance."
Mr Sharon is expected
to argue at his meeting with Mr Bush at the President's ranch in Crawford,
Texas, that the latter's acceptance last April that the big Jewish "population
centres" in the occupied West Bank should remain within Israel
in any final peace deal also applies to future expansion of Ma'ale Adumim.
When the Israeli
government's intentions to go ahead with the Ma'ale Adumim expansion
plan first resurfaced last month, Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary
of State, told The Los Angeles Times that it was at "odds with
... American policy". But she was then forced into modifying her
stance after a diplomatic row which followed leaked - and disputed -
remarks attributed to the US ambassador in Tel Aviv, Dan Kurtzer, in
which he was reported to have questioned whether the "understanding"
reached between Mr Bush and Mr Sharon last April meant that the biggest
settlements would necessarily remain Israel's in perpetuity.
Officials close
to Mr Sharon were reported at the time to have blamed government dissidents
for the leak, saying that it was an attempt to sabotage his plan to
disengage from Gaza by indicating that the Prime Minister was receiving
nothing in return. But if so it appeared to backfire badly by if anything
strengthening Mr Sharon's hand with Washington. Paul Patin, the American
embassy's spokesman, said yesterday that the US administration continued
to hold Israel to its commitments under the internationally agreed road
map to peace.
He added last night
that "the issue for Jerusalem is one for final status negotiations
between the parties".
The road map stipulates
an Israeli freeze on settlement construction as well as Palestinian
steps to dismantle the armed factions' "infrastructure". But
Israel has reinterpreted the road map to insist that the Palestinian
requirement is a precondition of the road map's operation rather than
a step within it.
Efforts by the Palestinian
President, Mahmoud Abbas, to crack down on militants are being hampered
by a struggle he is having with the young warlords of the al-Aqsa Martyrs'
Brigades. After 15 rebellious gunmen fired on the Muqata presidential
compound in Ramallah last Thursday night and ransacked four restaurants
patronised by senior Palestinian officials and their families, Mr Abbas
dismissed Haj Ismail Jaber, chief of armed forces on the West Bank,
and the Ramallah district commander, Yunis al-Has. He is expected to
sack or pension off dozens more.
"The security
apparatus did not do its job," Mr Abbas told a public meeting in
the administrative capital at the weekend, "so it was crucial to
take a stand. We will not allow anyone to take the law into his own
hands and sabotage our situation." Mr Abbas has refused to accept
the resignation of his West Bank intelligence chief, Tawfiq Tirawi,
who accused the other commanders of lying. "They are hiding from
you the truth about the security chaos," he is reported to have
told Mr Abbas. "Many of them are avoiding carrying out their duties."
©2005 Independent
News & Media (UK) Ltd.