Sharon Approves Building 600 New Settlements

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz have both given the green light to the building work in Maale Adumim, the largest of the West Bank settlements, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP) Monday, August 2.

"Mr Sharon and Mr Mofaz have given their go-ahead to the construction of these buildings" in Maale Adumim, a ministry spokesman told AFP.

The new units are expected to house some 2,000 Israelis which would represent a seven percent rise in the Jewish settlement’s population.

Under the terms of the roadmap peace plan, Israel is obliged to freeze all settlement activity in the occupied Palestinian territories where around 245,000 Israelis live.

According to Israel ’s Maariv newspaper, the housing ministry received instructions not to publish public tenders to avoid embarrassing the Americans who are one of the four sponsors of the roadmap.

US President George W. Bush said back in April 2004 that it was "unrealistic" to expect a complete Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank as he endorsed Sharon’s controversial disengagement plan.

The plan calls for evacuating all Israeli settlers from the Gaza Strip and four small Jewish enclaves in the northern West Bank next year.

Bush, who describes himself as a wartime president, further backtracked in an interview published May 8 on the 2005 date he set two years ago for the establishment of a Palestinian state.

Wall’s Route

More and more, Mofaz confirmed Monday that that major Jewish settlement of Maale Adumim and the Gush Etzion settlement bloc would be included inside the illegal West Bank separation wall.

"In any event, Maale Adumim and Gush Etzion will be included inside the security fence," Mofaz told reporters.

"We will not return to lines of 1967," he added in reference to the internationally-recognized borders of the West Bank which has been occupied by Israel since the end of the 1967 Six-Day War.

Maale Adumim, which lies close to Al-Quds (occupied East Jerusalem), is the largest of the West Bank settlements with some 28,000 residents, while around 12,000 live in the 15 settlements which make up Gush Etzion in the Bethlehem region of the southern West Bank.

Both were widely expected to be included in the route of the barrier that is being rerouted following a recent Israeli high court decision which said its path infringed the fundamental rights of tens of thousands of Palestinians living near Al-Quds.

Israel says the barrier is essential for security reasons but Palestinians argue that the route, by jutting into the West Bank , is proof of an intent to prejudge the borders of their promised future state.

The UN General Assembly demanded Israel on July 20 to abide by the International Court of Justice’s ruling and tear down the separation wall.

The ICJ ruled on July 9 that the barrier was illegal because it cuts deep into the occupied West Bank to shield settlements built by Israel on Palestinian territory it occupied in the 1967 Middle East War.

Israel has vowed to ignore the judges’ non-binding verdict.

More than 200,000 Palestinians are already suffering the humanitarian consequences of the wall, according to the United Nations.

The wall has resulted in the confiscation of 11,4000 dunums (2,850 acres – 1,140 hectares) of privately-owned Palestinian land and in the destruction of 102,320 trees, according to a report by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

It estimated that with the competition of the wall, 30 percent of the West Bank population, or some 680,000 people, will be "directly harmed."