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The Current Ethnic Cleansing in East Jerusalem (3)
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By Steven Erlanger
AL ZAYYEM, West Bank — They buried Rabi al-Essawy 14 months ago on land his family owns not far from this village, between East Jerusalem and the large Israeli settlement of Maale Adumim. Mr. Essawy, 65, was a member of an important clan, and thousands attended his funeral.
Khaled al-Saidi, right, said his family bought land in E1, between East Jerusalem and Maale Adumim, in the 1990s. The Israelis have told him to leave. Credit Rina Castelnuovo for The New York Times
But Mr. Essawy’s grave is in a parcel of land known as E1, a largely empty patch of the West Bank that is among the most sensitive pieces of real estate in an intractable conflict that is fundamentally about the land. The Israelis mean to annex E1 — short for East 1 — and they do not want Muslim graves to complicate future plans to build more settlements here.
Israeli authorities have ordered the family to remove Mr. Essawy’s remains and bury him in the village cemetery, just outside E1.
The fight over Mr. Essawy’s grave is a tiny skirmish in the long, intensifying battle over this parcel of land, a fight that speaks to the seemingly insurmountable differences, hostility and distrust between the Israelis and thePalestinians. It also stands as a symbol of the failure of negotiations as each side tries to outmaneuver the other with unilateral actions, and the international community is left on the sidelines to do little more than express discontent.
“It’s a big deal because for both sides, it looks like it’s in the heart of their dreams,” the columnist Nahum Barnea wrote in the newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth. “Nobody’s innocent here. Everybody’s trying to force his will on the other side.”
Israel sees E1, only 4.6 square miles and largely rocky desert, as the stone in the arch that connects East Jerusalem, which Israel has annexed, to Maale Adumim, one of the biggest of the so-called settlement blocs, with a population of 40,000. Israel says it intends to keep Maale Adumim in any peace settlement, hoping to swap land with any future Palestinian state. In fact, it was Yitzhak Rabin of the Labor Party who in 1994 attached E1 to the municipality of Maale Adumim.
For the Palestinians, E1 is seen as essential if they are ever to achieve a viable independent state with East Jerusalem as their capital. Palestinians say they need the land to preserve a workable, practical connection between East Jerusalem and the West Bank, and to build housing for Palestinian refugees and their descendants. As important, the Palestinians contend, E1 is central to a crucial north-south route through the West Bank from Ramallah to Bethlehem.
Israeli officials argue that a system of protected roads and tunnels through E1 could allow Palestinians passage. Palestinians say that Israelis could instead use such roads to travel between Maale Adumim and Jerusalem, where many of the settlers work. Israeli officials also argue that the West Bank is not obstructed farther to the east, and that Palestinians can drive north-south closer to the Jordan River; Palestinians say that the Jordan Valley is too far out of their way and that Israel has said it will demand a security presence there in any case.
E1 has been contentious for years, with Washington warning various Israeli governments not to start building there. But E1 burst back into the forefront recently after Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, won United Nations General Assembly approval to recognize Palestine as a nonmember observer state. Mr. Abbas pressed ahead despite warnings from the United States and Israel that such an action would be a unilateral step in violation of the 1993 Oslo Accords that set up the supposedly interim Palestinian Authority.
Mr. Abbas won handily in the General Assembly on Nov. 29, in a 138 to 9 vote. Even Germany, a strong Israeli ally, abstained. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel responded with a three-part riposte. He withheld taxes collected on behalf of the Palestinians to pay down their electricity debt to Israel. He announced final approval for the construction of 3,000 more housing units in East Jerusalem and existing settlement blocs — beyond the 1967 borders, but within current settlement lines. And finally, he accelerated planning for the construction of up to 3,400 housing units inside E1.
The decision set off a critical reaction, especially in Washington and Europe. Many countries called in Israeli ambassadors to complain. But there was confusion, too, with some critics presuming that construction would go ahead in E1.
Israeli officials explained later that any construction in E1, if it happened at all, was many years away, and that the move on E1 was “symbolism against symbolism” — a symbolic response to a symbolic recognition of statehood. But the new planning for E1 is also “a warning to the Palestinians that E1 is now in play if they do further outrageous acts,” one senior official said. “We don’t exclude the possibility that E1 moves from symbolism to something real — the prime minister has raised the stakes and put E1 back on the table.”
Mr. Netanyahu himself told the German newspaper Die Welt that “as far as our future action is concerned, it depends on the Palestinians.” He added: “In any case what we’ve advanced so far is only planning, and we will have to see. We shall act further based on what the Palestinians do. If they don’t act unilaterally, then we won’t have any purpose to do so either.”
But he has also argued that there is a political consensus in Israel that E1 should be used for more Israeli settlement, that previous governments agreed with him, and that the Labor Party, under Mr. Rabin, authorized E1.
For now, the only significant Israeli construction in E1, which is largely state land, is a regional police station. Built in 2008 high on a hill, it overlooks the village cemetery where Yusra al-Qaisi, believed to be 75, was buried last week.
Khaled al-Saidi, 33, was among the mourners. He is a Bedouin whose family has lived on this land, he said, for more than 80 years; more important, and unlike most of the Bedouins here, his family bought the land in the 1990s. Still, he has been told by the Israelis to move; the house of his brother, Ali, has already been destroyed, because it was supposedly in the path of a future security zone.
“Here I’m on the edge of the security zone and there I’m also in the way of your settlement,” he said. “Where do I go? I just want a place for my sheep to go.”
On the opposite hill, near the police station, the authorities of Maale Adumim set up a Hanukkahmenorah, their efforts to light a candle defeated by the wind. But the mayor of the settlement, Benny Kashriel, said that he believes that after 18 years of delay and hesitation, the Israeli government might finally be ready to authorize construction in E1.
Source:
http://www.nytimes.com
Posted on: December 2012
By Harriet Sherwood
Despite its prosaic name, E1 has the potential to kill off hopes for a viable Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital, according to opponents of Israeli development on the 12 sq km site .
Israeli officials say construction on E1 is the logical and necessary expansion of Maale Adumim, a vast settlement east of the pre-1967 Green Line, to meet demand for homes close to the city that Israel claims is its indivisible capital. Plans to develop the land have been in existence for almost 14 years, but they have been kept on hold largely due to pressure from Washington.
Mostly stretching towards Jericho, E1 is home to a number of Bedouin communities and their livestock, plus a huge Israeli police headquarters perched strategically on a hill. A network of roads has been constructed, but it is closed to civilian traffic.
Implementation of the E1 development plan, approved in 1999, would largely complete a crescent of Jewish settlements around the east of Jerusalem, separating it from Palestinian towns and cities in the West Bank. It would also almost bisect the West Bank, making a contiguous Palestinian state almost impossible.
According to the Israeli human rights organisation B’tselem, implementation of the E1 plan will have “far-reaching consequences and will interrupt the contiguity of the southern and northern West Bank”.
It added: “The construction in E1 will further increase the forced isolation between the West Bank and East Jerusalem. It will enclose East Jerusalem from the east, connect to the Israeli neighbourhoods built north of Jerusalem’s Old City, and create a physical and functional barrier between East Jerusalem and the Palestinian population in adjacent West Bank communities for which the city serves as the main metropolitan and religious centre.”
The Israeli authorities have taken steps to implement a plan to forcibly relocate more than 1,000 Bedouin who live and graze their livestock on the stony hills. Demolition orders have been issued for homes, animal pens and a school built from discarded car tyres. Israel says the buildings were constructed without permission, which is almost impossible to obtain.
The original plan entailed moving the Bedouin families to a site close to Jerusalem’s main rubbish dump. Following legal challenges and international pressure, Israel has said it will consult the communities on their relocation.
Israel’s decision to press ahead with the development of E1 in the aftermath of the United Nations general assembly’s recognition of the state of Palestine signals an intention to build, rather than the start of construction, which would be many years away.
Maale Adumim is home to around 40,000 people. Resembling a small city, it has more than 20 schools and 80 kindergartens, 40 synagogues and several shopping malls. The majority of its residents are secular Jews who do not consider themselves settlers but inhabitants of a suburb of Jerusalem. Israel says Maale Adumim and other main settlement blocks close to the Green Line must be on the Israeli side of any future border.
All settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank are illegal under international law.
Source:
http://www.theguardian.com
Posted on: 2 Dec 2012
The E-1 plan and its implications for human rights in the West Bank In late November 2012, the media reported that the Israeli government had issued instructions to promote the planning of thousands of apartments that would constitute an expansion of the Ma’ale Adumim settlement as part of the E-1 plan, in the segment that connect Ma’ale Adumim to Jerusalem. 
According to themedia reports, these instructions were issued following the UN General Assembly’s recognition of Palestine as a state with UN observer status. After the directive was issued, the Civil Administration approved two of the three E-1 residential plans to be filed for objections. In August 2013, the plans had not yet been filed and no progress has been made toward their approval.
The implementation of construction plans in E1 will create an urban bloc between Ma’ale Adumim and Jerusalem, exacerbate the isolation of East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank and disrupt the territorial contiguity between the northern and southern parts of the West Bank. The establishment of settlements in occupied territory is a breach of international humanitarian law, which prohibits the transfer of people from the occupying state into the occupied area. It also prohibits any permanent changes in the occupied territory, with the exception of changes mandated by military needs or in order to benefit the local population. In addition, the establishment of Israeli settlements leads to numerous violations of Palestinians’ human rights. In addition, the Civil Administration is planning to expel the Bedouin communities currently residing in this area. If the expulsion goes through, it will be a further breach of international humanitarian law, which prohibits the forcible transfer of “protected persons”, such as these communities, other than for their own safety or for an urgent military need. Even then, it is permissible only on a temporary basis. These exceptions are not applicable in this case.
What is E1?
The E1 master plan (Plan No. 420/4) was approved in 1999. It covers approximately 1,200 hectares of land – most of which Israel declared as state land in a legally dubious procedure. During the 1990s these lands were made part of the jurisdiction of the settlement of Ma’ale Adumim, so it now encompasses approximately 4,800 hectares. The northern and southern edges of the plan largely correspond to the route planned for the Separation Barrier in the area, which would leave Ma’ale Adumim on the “Israeli” side of the barrier and separate it from neighboring areas of the West Bank. The E-1 compound is interspersed with enclaves of privately owned Palestinian land. The overall area of these enclaves is approximately 77.5 hectares. Israel was unable to declare them state land and they are not officially included in the plans. However, it is clear that the physical reality resulting from the plan will greatly limit Palestinian landowners’ access to their lands.
In addition to residential units, the plan designates areas for tourism, commerce, regional services, a regional cemetery, roads, etc. Detailed plans have already been approved for two of the plans, enabling the building permits to be issued:
- Plan 420/4/2 designates 135 hectares in the north-west section of the E1 compound, bordering on Jerusalem’s municipal jurisdiction, for a metropolitan employment and business center serving both Ma’aleh Adumim and the Jerusalem municipality. The plan, submitted by the Ministry of Industry and Trade and prepared by the firm of Reches-Eshkol, was approved in 2002 but has yet to be implemented.
- Plan 420/4/9 designates approximately 18 hectares for the Judea and Samaria district headquarters of the Israel Police. Approved in 2005, this plan has already been implemented, and the police headquarters has been in operation there since 2008. As part of the development of the area for the implementation of the plan, additional infrastructure was put in place, including the paving of roads, the construction of supporting walls, traffic roundabouts and street lighting, costing an estimated total of about NIS 200 million. The scale of this development is much larger than would be required simply for allowing access to the police headquarters. It appears to be part of the future development of the planned residential compound near the police headquarters.
At least three detailed plans for residential construction in the E-1 compound are being prepared, proposing 4,000 residential units and ten hotels. To date, Israeli governments have delayed any further construction in the area, partly because of strong objections on the part of the US administration and the European Union. According to media reports, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu promised the US president that he would not build in E-1. Nevertheless, in response to the UN decision to admit Palestine as an observer state, the government issued directives in late November 2012 to promote the detailed plans. Further to the government instructions, the Civil Administration approved the filing for objections of two of the three E-1 residential plans. The plans had not yet been filed in August 2013 and no progress had been made in the process of their approval.
Whom does the plan harm?
Implementation of the E1 plan will have significant repercussions for the entire population of the West Bank. Jerusalem borders on the narrowest area of the West Bank, where it spans only about 28 kilometers from east to west. Construction in E-1 will further reduce the already narrow corridor that connects the northern and southern West Bank and will impede the establishment of a Palestinian state with territorial contiguity. Israel is planning to build an alternative road that would connect between the two parts of the West Bank for use by Palestinians, but this is no more than a traffic solution.
Although all settlements are designated as closed military zones, this order is generally enforced only for their built-up areas. Implementation of the plan will result in the privately owned Palestinian lands inside E-1 becoming enclaves surrounded by built-up areas of settlements and there is concern that the landowners will not be able to access and farm these lands. The implementation of the plan will also harm the Bedouin communities in the area, whose access to grazing lands will be denied. In any case, the Civil Administration is already planning expulsion of the members of these communities. In addition, the roads currently used by Palestinians will become local roads used by settlers and Palestinians will be denied access to them. If no alternate roads are built, this access ban will significantly reduce Palestinian freedom of movement in the area.
Construction in E-1 will enclose East Jerusalem from the east and link up with the Israeli neighborhoods built north of the Old City. East Jerusalem is part of the West Bank and had once served as an urban center for West Bank residents. However, the ban Israel imposed on the entry of Palestinians into the city has artificially separated it from the rest of the West Bank. This separation will be intensified with the implementation of the E-1 plan.
Source:
http://www.btselem.org
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