Israel has frozen a controversial project to link its largest West Bank settlement to annexed east Jerusalem, Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said in a newspaper interview published on Friday.
It is the first confirmation from a top official that Israel has suspended plans to build 3 500 new housing units near Maale Adumim, which defied the Middle East road-map peace plan.
”The state of Israel has committed itself to freeze the building,” Olmert was quoted as telling the English-language Jerusalem Post.
”As such, we would be acting in an irresponsible manner if we would do otherwise,” he added.
Earlier this year, Washington sharply rebuked Israel over plans to build the new housing units given that the internationally drafted road map calls for a complete halt to all Jewish settlement activity on Palestinian land.
The Palestinians say any building on the so-called E-1 corridor between Maale Adumim and Jerusalem will wreck the viability of their promised future state by cutting off Palestinian areas of the West Bank from east Jerusalem.
Nevertheless, Israel has insisted it will link Maale Adumim to settlements in east Jerusalem, which has been occupied since the 1967 Middle East war and which the Palestinians want to make the capital of their future state.
Olmert told the Jerusalem Post it is ”absolutely clear” the planned housing units, to house an estimated 20 000 settlers, will eventually be built.
”It is absolutely clear that at a certain point in the future Israel will create continuity between Jerusalem and Maale Adumim, and so there is not even an argument that in the end we will have to build the project,” he said.
A source in Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s office said on Wednesday it will take two to three years to overcome all the legal appeals and processes necessary to begin work on the new neighbourhood.
Maale Adumim, already home to 28 000 Israelis, has become a matter of political one-upmanship within the main ruling Likud party ahead of a leadership contest expected in November.
Former premier Benjamin Netanyahu, who is trying to oust Sharon, accused him of ”giving into international demands against building” between Maale Adumim and Jerusalem when he campaigned in the area on Wednesday.
Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas this week urged Israel to dismantle all Jewish settlements built on all Palestinian territory, following its historic evacuation of all settlers from the Gaza Strip.
Sharon has argued the pull-out from Gaza enables Israel to cement its control over its largest blocs in the biblically important West Bank.
Israeli officials maintain that expanding Maale Adumim will create a strategic buffer zone to the east of Jerusalem that will stop Palestinian militants from infiltrating Israel.
They insist that a road being built from the southern West Bank town of Bethlehem to the Palestinian Authority administrative headquarters of Ramallah, which bypasses Maale Adumim, will ensure Palestinian territorial continuity. — Sapa-AFP