RAMALLAH, 13 April 2005 — Despite a rare US rebuke for Israel, laborers were hard at work yesterday building a new neighborhood in a West Bank settlement near Jerusalem.
In unusually sharp words for his close ally, President George W. Bush publicly reminded Prime Minister Ariel Sharon three times at their summit Monday that Israel was obliged to freeze all settlement activity in the occupied territories as part of its commitments to the Middle East road map peace plan. Bush’s comments were prompted by the Israeli government’s recent decision to approve plans for 3,500 new homes at Maaleh Adumim.
Maaleh Adumim is already home to some 28,000 people but Sharon’s ultimate objective is to effectively link the settlement to Arab East Jerusalem, thus severing the link between the rest of the West Bank and the part of the city which the Palestinians want as the capital of their promised future state. In a bid to downplay disagreements with the Bush administration, Sharon’s camp has been emphasizing that the implementation of the project to build the 3,500 new homes is not even on the horizon. But a tour of Maaleh Adumim, organized yesterday by the anti-settlement watchdog Peace Now, showed that Israel is already clearly flouting the road map’s call to freeze all settlement activity.
Meanwhile, more than 200 Palestinians have pledged not to carry out acts of violence in exchange for jobs, in a first step toward disarming gunmen wanted by Israel, a Palestinian official said yesterday.
The Palestinian Authority is seeking signed commitments from a thousand militants to allow them to join security forces or get civilian government jobs.
Abdel-Fattah Hamayel, a former Cabinet minister, said about 80 wanted men had already started working for West Bank security services.
— With input from agencies
