Despite 'road map,' Israel approves expansion of West Bank settlement

JERUSALEM -- Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's government has given final approval for the building of 3,500 new housing units in Maaleh Adumim, already the most populous Jewish settlement in the West Bank, Israeli officials said yesterday. The expansion is the largest single housing project on occupied Palestinian territory in years and violates the terms of the US-conceived peace plan known as the ''road map."

Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz endorsed the new construction last week, under a plan launched six years ago to link Maaleh Adumim to Jerusalem about seven miles away and tighten Israel's grip over a large swath of West Bank land. The approval went through even as Sharon's government continued pushing forward his program to withdraw from another part of the West Bank and from all of the Gaza Strip this summer.

Critics of settlement expansion said the extension of Maaleh Adumim would nearly bisect the West Bank and seriously set back the Palestinian goal of establishing a contiguous independent state -- an aim also articulated by President Bush.

Sharon, meanwhile, yesterday rejected a compromise proposed by rebellious members of his own party who oppose the Gaza withdrawal plan and who could jeopardize it when Israel's parliament votes next week on the 2005 state budget. The Likud rebels, as they are known, were seeking to preserve illegal West Bank outposts that Sharon has pledged to dismantle.

Raanan Gissin, Sharon's media adviser, said the Maaleh Adumim construction did not violate the road map because Israel reserved the right in its provisional acceptance of the peace plan two years ago to continue building in settlements under certain conditions.

''In any event, Maaleh Adumim is not negotiable. Maaleh Adumim is going to be an integral part of Jerusalem in any future agreement," Gissin said.

Another official said authorities were still conducting an environmental impact study but that construction could begin later this year.

Israel's persistent expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank, on land where Palestinians make up a huge majority and hope to one day have an independent state, has been a constant feature of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for the past 30 years and did not abate even when the two sides were engaged in a peace process in the 1990s.

In each of the last three years, Israel has initiated construction of about 1,400 new housing units in the West Bank, according to Peace Now, a group that opposes settlements and monitors their expansion. Maaleh Adumim marks the most ambitious project in at least 10 years, the group said.

Successive Israeli governments have viewed Maaleh Adumim as a suburb of Jerusalem -- a settlement that falls within the ''Israeli consensus" on what should be the final boundaries of the state.

Unlike the ideologically driven residents of smaller and more remote settlements, many of Maaleh Adumim's 25,000 inhabitants moved there because housing is cheaper than in Jerusalem and only a 10-minute drive from the city.

But most Palestinians see Maaleh Adumim and other Israeli settlements as Israel's way of chipping away at their already undersized territory.

''If this project is carried out, that means shutting the door for negotiations and peace," Palestinian Cabinet minister Saeb Erekat said. ''This project intends to determine the future of Jerusalem by settlements and not negotiations."

The road map peace plan, formally introduced by the United States, Russia, the European Union, and the United Nations in April 2003, sought to contain the contentious issue by compelling Israel to freeze ''all settlement activity."

But Sharon's government, while accepting the plan, attached 14 reservations, one of which says Israel is not bound to move ahead with the plan until there is a ''complete cessation of terror, violence, and incitement" by the Palestinians.

Also, Sharon says a letter he received from Bush a year ago recognizing that certain ''settlement blocs" would fall under Israeli control even after a peace deal with the Palestinians, amounts to tacit US support for expansion of some settlements.

Construction at Maaleh Adumim is especially problematic because the settlement is located in the narrow band between Jerusalem and the West Bank's border with Jordan. Settlement critics believe Israel, by linking Maaleh Adumim with Jerusalem, will severely hamper the ability of Palestinians to travel between the northern and southern parts of the West Bank.

''It is really a strategic severing of the two parts of the West Bank," said Nathan Marom, an urban planner who works with Bimkom, an Israeli group that critiques Israel's planning and zoning policies.

''It will force Palestinians to make a huge detour to get from north to south," he said.

Officials say in response that Israel has a plan to build a network of ''bypass roads" for Palestinians that might include tunnels and flyovers to circumvent Jewish settlements. ''There will be full contiguity," Gissin said. ''This isn't a plan to cut off the Palestinians."

Bush, in a speech made last month in Belgium, said Israel must ''ensure that a new Palestinian state is truly viable, with contiguous territory on the West Bank."

''A state of scattered territories will not work," the president said.

About 220,000 Jewish settlers live in the West Bank and another 200,000 in East Jerusalem -- areas Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war -- among about 2 million Palestinians.

Marom, the urban planner, said Israel was also planning to build two new neighborhoods south of Jerusalem, on the Palestinian side of the line separating Israel from the West Bank but on the Israeli side of its planned security barrier.

He said the neighborhoods, which would flank the Har Homa neighborhood, are mentioned in a multiyear urban master plan drafted by the Jerusalem municipality and publicized late last year. Marom said the plan must still get government approval before construction of the neighborhoods commences. Palestinians consider Har Homa, which sits astride the Jerusalem-Bethlehem road, to be an illegal settlement.

Sharon spent most of his political career promoting Jewish settlements, but his plan to dismantle 21 of them in Gaza and another four in the northern West Bank starting in July has put him at loggerheads with settlers and with 13 of 40 lawmakers in his own Likud party.

Sharon needs the support of at least some of the 13 to get his state budget bill passed by March 31. If it fails, under Israeli law, he must hold elections within 60 days.

One of the dissenters suggested yesterday that all 13 would vote with Sharon on the budget in exchange for his retroactive approval of 71 settlement outposts established in the West Bank in recent years without government permission. Sharon rejected the offer.

''I believe the budget will pass anyway," Gissin said. ''And if not, he can always hold a quick election and solidify his support. So any way you look at it, it's a win-win situation."