RAMALLAH, 2 October 2007 — Israel is determined to move police to a new West Bank headquarters by the end of the year, officials said yesterday, despite US concerns that Israeli development in that particular area near Jerusalem harms prospects for establishing a viable Palestinian state. The United States has blocked past Israeli efforts to develop the 12-square-kilometer area, known as E-1 and located just east of Jerusalem. Development plans envision 3,500 homes, several hotels and an industrial park there, but were frozen at the urging of the US.
The E-1 project, if completed, would effectively cut off East Jerusalem from the West Bank hinterland. Palestinians and Israeli human rights groups see the E-1 proposal as part of an Israeli attempt to consolidate control over West Bank land east of Jerusalem, with the help of a massive separation barrier and new highways.
In the meantime, Israel has gone ahead with building a four-story police station in the E-1 area. The Israeli daily Haaretz said that Israel has argued that unlike homes, a security installation such as a police station, could be more easily removed if required in a peace deal.
Meanwhile, a large American charity organization has told Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot that it would “review” questions raised about funds channeled to Palestinian non-governmental organizations (NGOs), following a critique by an Israeli NGO watchdog.
NGO Monitor, based in Jerusalem, has recently released a report on donations by the Ford Foundation to a number of Palestinian organizations.
In its report, NGO Monitor said the Ford Foundation had “violated its own funding guidelines.”
The report was not the first time that the Ford Foundation and NGO Monitor clashed. The Israeli watchdog harshly criticized the foundation after the Ford-funded Palestinian NGO’s participating in the 2001 Durban racism conference launched a “high-pitched anti-Zionist campaign.”
“Following exposure of the Ford Foundation’s support for radical participants in the infamous NGO Forum of the Durban 2001 conference, Ford officials pledged to stop ‘supporting organizations whose conduct is antithetical to our objectives of promoting peace, justice, tolerance and understanding’. However, as planning begins for a follow-on UN conference in 2009 ... many Ford-funded NGOs continue to violate Ford’s terms,” NGO Monitor said in a press statement.
