Profile: Israel Plans to Expand a Large Jewish Settlement in the West Bank

All Things Considered: March 22, 2005

MICHELE NORRIS, host:

Israel plans to build 3,500 new housing units in the largest Jewish settlement in the West Bank. Israeli officials say the plans have been in the works for a long time, but Palestinians and Israeli critics say the move could make a viable Palestinian state almost impossible. NPR's Linda Gradstein has the story.

SOUNDBITE OF CROWD NOISE

LINDA GRADSTEIN reporting:

On the second floor of the municipality of Ma'ale Adummim, school registration for next year is in full swing. Barhar Azouli(ph) has come to register his three-year-old son for nursery school. Azouli says he supports the government's plan to greatly expand the settlement.

Mr. BARHAR AZOULI: (Through Translator) With God's help, they'll build 6,000 new houses, not 3,000. We should expand as much as we can. It's our country, our land and we want it.

GRADSTEIN: Mayor Benny Kashriel has big plans for this settlement, which already has more than 30,000 residents. And he speaks enthusiastically about the proposed new neighborhood.

Mayor BENNY KASHRIEL (Ma'ale Adummim): This is part of our master plan of building a Ma'ale Adummim city. And with this new neighborhood, we will be about 60,000 residents.

GRADSTEIN: Kashriel says the plans have been in the works for more than seven years. Two months ago, the Israeli defense minister approved the construction. The plan was published in local newspapers this week. Kashriel brushes aside Palestinian criticism of the plan.

Mayor KASHRIEL: The Palestinians objecting all the settlements in all the cities. And it is obviously they are against Ma'ale Adummim as before.

GRADSTEIN: But critics of the plan, like Israeli peace activist Danny Zeidman, says the new construction would cut the West Bank in two.

Mr. DANNY ZEIDMAN (Israeli Peace Activist): If we're talking about a Palestinian state, we're talking about a cantonized Palestinian state, with the Ramallah canton and the Bethlehem canton very close to one another but with no natural contiguity between them.

GRADSTEIN: Zeidman says the Israeli plan would extend Ma'ale Adummim to the boundaries of Jerusalem and cut off traditionally Arab East Jerusalem from the West Bank. Palestinians say East Jerusalem, which Israel annexed, must be the capital of any future Palestinian state. Cabinet minister Saeb Erekat said that if the Ma'ale Adummim plan is carried out, Israel will be dictating the future of Jerusalem before negotiations even begin.

Danny Zeidman says road and infrastructure work on the new neighborhood was begun in the late 1990s, but Israel was forced to stop it.

Mr. ZEIDMAN: The reason that it hasn't been carried out is that the United States government has systematically read Israel the riot act over this, saying that this is the quintessential unilateral action that will predispose the outcome of final status. If you want to negotiate this, fine, around a negotiating table. But you're not to create facts on the ground.

GRADSTEIN: But Ma'ale Adummim Mayor Benny Kashriel argues that the Bush administration has already agreed that his settlement and other large Israeli population centers in the West Bank will not be given to the Palestinians in any future peace deal. He was referring to a letter President Bush gave Prime Minister Ariel Sharon last year acknowledging that Israel should not be expected to give up the large settlement blocks in a peace accord.

But US State Department officials, speaking on background in Washington, say they were surprised about the plan to expand Ma'ale Adummim. The officials pointed to the US-backed road map to peace, which calls on Israel to freeze settlement expansion. The issue is expected to come up when Prime Minister Sharon meets President Bush at his Texas ranch next month. Linda Gradstein, NPR News.

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