Grab and Settle: The Story of Ma'ale Adumim

Grab and Settle: The Story of Ma`ale Adumim

By Geoffrey Aronson

28/06/2005

Report: May - June 2005

http://www.palestine-pmc.com/details.asp?cat=3&id=571

Source: http://www.fmep.org/reports/vol15/no3/01-grab_and_settle.html

Ma'ale Adumim stands out as one of the most important achievements of Israel's settlement campaign. In the century-old battle between Arab and Jew, this town has amassed two of the conflict's winning ingredients, land and population. Today, with close to 30,000 inhabitants and control of an area of 60 km2, it is the most populous of all settlements other than those located in East Jerusalem, with a land reserve that promises continued population growth. The five neighboring Palestinian villages currently have more residents, but expropriations favoring Ma'ale Adumim have left them with an area of only 4.6 km2. These facts have won Ma'ale Adumim a much-coveted designation, not only as part of Israel's "national consensus," enjoying as a result the support of all major Israeli parties, but also recognition from the Bush administration as one of the "new realities on the ground" that an Israeli-Palestinian agreement must accommodate.

Ma'ale Adumim exemplifies Israel's use of civilian settlement as an instrument of national-strategic policy. The mission of settlement in the occupied territories was proclaimed by then defense minister Ariel Sharon upon his return from the summit at Wye Plantation in October 1998, where a stillborn deal was struck for Israel's redeployment in the West Bank.

Sharon exhorted settlers to "move, run, [and] grab more hills, expand the territory. Everything that is grabbed will remain in our hands. Everything we don't grab will be in their hands."

Like the "outpost" phenomena that Sharon's remarks sparked, the creation and settlement of Ma'ale Adumim was born in a fog of deliberate obfuscation and little regard not only for international conventions prohibiting settlement but also of Israeli laws enacted to regulate it.

Ma'ale Adumim represents one of the first settlement achievements of Gush Emunim, and it enjoyed the critical patronage of then-defense minister Shimon Peres at its birth. Originally a "work camp" of 22 families, the outpost was established in 1975 without formal government authorization but with Peres' active support. Once in place, Ma'ale Adumim's patrons argued against its evacuation, establishing a rationale that has now been used for more than three decades with great success. Along with Elon Moreh, the "laundering" of its status as a now "legal" civilian settlement was one of the first acts of the government of Menachem Begin in 1977. The lands of the E-1 area nearby that have recently come to public and international attention were originally expropriated during this period. In the 1980s, Israel classified the area as "state land" and thus available for Israeli settlement.

Ma'ale Adumim's location on a hilltop commanding the road between Jerusalem and the Allenby Bridge to Jordan was no accident. Rather its placement there was the product of an emerging settlement strategy promoting the creation of numerous settlement "blocs" throughout the West Bank as the principal means for preventing Palestinian self-determination.

Settlement expansion was, and remains, at the heart of Israel's zero-sum contest against Palestinians for control of the occupied territories and its political destiny. In September 1980, head of the Settlement Department of the World Zionist Organization Matityahu Drobless, wrote in a report outlining the program of settlement expansion, "State land and lands that lie fallow in Judea and Samaria must be taken immediately, in order to settle the areas that are between centers of minority [i.e., Palestinian] population and around them as well, in an effort to minimize as far as possible the danger of the development of another Arab state in these areas. If divided by Jewish communities, it will be difficult for the minority population to create territorial and political unity and continuity."

The Begin government marked Ma'ale Adumim as a magnet for population growth in 1978. In 1992, when its population reached 15,000, it was designated as the first Israeli "city" in the West Bank.

The inclusion of an adjacent 12,000 dunams known as E-1 as part of Ma'ale Adumim and the plan for its settlement was begun by Yitzhak Rabin, who on February 2, 1994 approved the application of an Israeli developer to construct a hotel in the area. This decision was soon expanded into a planning process for the entire area. In August 1994, the IDF commander declared that the entire area would be included within Ma'ale Adumim's boundaries. All subsequent prime ministers supported the plan as it made its way through Israel's serpentine planning bureaucracy. Defense Minister Yitzhak Mordechai approved the plan in 1997, after which it was endorsed by Israel's High Court in a decision rejecting a petition against it filed by Palestinians. The Netanyahu government, however, decided to freeze the process at a time when the plans for settlement at Har Homa and Ras al-Amud were moving forward. But a more detailed plan, now including new roads and buildings, was filed in mid-1999. This decision too survived a court challenge by Palestinians. The environmental aspects of the scheme were approved in June 2002, the last stage before approval by the minister of defense. In early 2005, prime minister Sharon and defense minister Shaul Mofaz authorized a land survey, after which the plan will be ready for final approval by Israel's Supreme Planning Council. The mayor of Ma'ale Adumim, Benjamim Kashriel, claims that large-scale construction will commence in 2007. But there is already a complex of buildings recently constructed there for Israel's Border Police, who currently occupy a site eyed by settlers in Ras al-Amud.

Harnessing this territory to the settlement enterprise accomplishes two complementary objectives. First, by linking Ma'ale Adumim through E-1 to the settlement areas of East Jerusalem, Israel, in the words of Meron Benvenisti, "creates Jewish territorial continuity from the approaches of Jericho to the coastal plain." Second, it "irrevocably splits the northern part of the West Bank from the south, strangling 50,000 Palestinians residing in its environs" and denies them critical reserves of land for development and housing.

Jan de Jong, the Report's cartographer, has noted that "far more than construction at Har Homa, Israel's implementation of the E-1 plan will confront Palestinians with a dramatic narrowing of options for Arab Jerusalem. If not challenged effectively, Arab Jerusalem's current condition as a disconnected sprawl of predominantly squalid neighborhoods will become permanent, rendering it an essentially symbolic remnant of an Arab community."

Palestinian opposition to the plan has been less decisive in delaying the plan's implementation than reservations voiced by Washington. A series of American enquiries over the years, most recently at the Crawford summit between Sharon and Bush, elicited the standard Israeli refrain:

"The plan is an old one, still far from execution, and no final decision has been made."

Sharon observed that the E-1 plan poses a dilemma not for Israel, but for Washington, which has to rationalize its opposition to settlement expansion with Bush's April 2004 letter supporting border changes to accommodate "major Israeli population centers" in the West Bank. In any case, Israel long ago discounted U.S. opposition to settlement expansion. As former State Department official Aaron Miller noted in a recent Washington appearance, during his almost 25 years in government there never was "an honest conversation about what the Israelis were actually doing on the ground. Nor were we prepared to impose, at least in the last seven or eight years, a cost on the Israelis for their actions."

In an April 22 interview with the Jerusalem Post, Sharon explained,

The E-1 building plan is an old plan, close to 10 years old. As I recall, it was begun when Labor was heading the government. It's true that the announcement of the plan recently created a storm all over the world, and in my opinion, let's say, put the president in a far from simple position. But it's a plan that still needs to be worked on for many years. I am sure we will speak about it with the Americans.

The United States has always, let's say since 1968, opposed Jewish settlement. The United States was opposed to Jewish settlement in the Golan Heights. It opposed Jewish settlement in Judea and Samaria and in the Gaza Strip. And it has never changed that position.

Israel, during those years, saw great importance in taking hold of strategically important portions of Judea and Samaria. But even on those subjects of nonunderstanding, I think that the relationship--certainly the relationship that I have created--has enabled us to find ways to deal with all issues.

Aluf Benn reported in Ha'aretz on March 25 that, "there has been no evident attempt by the American administration to stop the project. On the Israeli side they are saying that the building of E-1 is essential for the future existence of the Ma'ale Adumim bloc, and this is also understood in Washington. The main thing is that it be done quietly."

Sharon has explained that Israel cannot "expect to receive explicit American agreement to build freely in settlements." He also understands that Israel has no need of such an endorsement, and can well live with the long-ineffective U.S. policy.

As the Baltimore Sun editorialized so cogently, "If the Bush administration wants to stop settlement expansion, it will have to do more than complain about it."