Defense Minister Benny Gantz and Prime Minister Naftali Bennett have ordered the Civil Administration in Judea and Samaria's supreme planning council to halt discussions on the authorization of construction to connect Maale Adumim to Jerusalem in the E-1 corridor.
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Construction had been planned for some 3,000 acres of largely government-owned land and was to include some 3,500 housing units.
The committee began to discuss the plan, which had been frozen for years, toward the end of the previous government under Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu. Bennett and Gantz intervened at the fourth of six authorization stages after most of the Palestinian objections to the move were heard.
The government directive to stop the talks and the promotion of the plan followed sharp criticism from the Meretz party, which made clear it saw the advancement of construction as the crossing of a red line, as well as opposition from Washington. The US has for years taken the Palestinian side on the issue, claiming the plan would cut off Palestinian territorial continuity from the north to the south and could prevent the establishment of a future Palestinian state.
The Israeli position, however, is that the plan would not harm any such continuity, which does not exist to begin with, and which if it should become necessary, could see the E-1 corridor circumvented through roads, tunnels, and other construction. All government heads, beginning with the late Yitzhak Rabin, who initiated the plan, have expressed public support for the move but found it difficult to advance due to diplomatic pressure.
The Israeli interest in realizing the E-1 plan, as defined by IDF chiefs of staff throughout the years, is not shared by the international community, and the EU in particular. Israel's interest is to see continuity between the west of the country – Jerusalem – and the east – from Maale Adumim to the Dead Sea, as part of a Jewish security belt around the capital.
Israel fears the Palestinians could cut Maale Adumim off from Jerusalem through construction that would surround Jerusalem from the east and see portions of Jerusalem go back to being something of a no man's land, as they were on the eve of the 1967 Six-Day War, in such a way that would prevent the city from developing eastward, as well as threats to the Jerusalem-Jericho road upon which Palestinian construction has encroached. This artery is of strategic and security importance of the first degree for Israel to be able to lead its troops through the Jordan Valley and northward in a time of war.
In Israel, there was for many years a nearly absolute consensus on the need to connect Maale Adumim to Jerusalem through construction in the E-1 corridor, and in the future, to apply Israeli sovereignty to this space as part of the State of Israel's permanent borders. Eight prime ministers, including Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert, committed to the E-1 construction, but outside of the construction of a district police station, no other progress was made due to intense diplomatic pressure and US and EU opposition.
"After years of a construction freeze, when we finally started to move along the path of planning approval procedures, this intervention is unacceptable," Maale Adumim Mayor Benny Kashriel said. "We thought Gantz was the successor to Rabin, who initiated the plan and declared the E-1 lands state land. Unfortunately, we have been proven wrong. This was done without consulting with us. The time has come to realize through construction our control of these lands before others take over them.
"The claim that E-1 cuts off Palestinian continuity is not true," Kashriel said. "Anyone familiar with the area knows it. It's just an excuse to prevent us from developing and growing."
In Maale Adumim itself, in the area bordering the planned construction, construction is now underway on 800 new housing units following a lengthy freeze. Another 3,300 housing units, to be built between the industrial area and the Nofei Hasela neighborhood that borders the E-1 corridor, are now in the planning phase. Some 40,000 people currently live in Maale Adumim.
Gantz's office declined to comment on the report.
The Prime Minister's Office did not issue a statement in time for the article's publication.
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