On first examination, Hill E1 does not suggest that it could stir deep political passions. A barren knob of earth and rock, topped by stunted pines, it spreads out in steep ridges north of Road One from Jerusalem to Jericho.
To the south is spread out the vast settlement block of Maale Adumim, overlooking the road; to the north, the land unfolds to the distant Jerusalem neighbourhoods of Mount Scopus and French Hill.
For now, it is a largely uninhabited, but building on it would bisect the nascent Palestinian state on the West Bank, creating a continuous block of Jewish neighbourhoods extending from Maale Adumim across the hills. This would block Arab East Jerusalem from the West Bank.
As a result, the big figures of Israeli politics have come to this hill — in person or symbolically — to stake their claim. Israel’s new political reality is increasingly dominated by the acceptance of withdrawal from large areas of the West Bank; politicians have therefore been outbidding one another as to who will ensure that Israel’s proposed new borders — within its concrete separation wall — contains the most land.
Hill E1 has become the acid test. Before his devastating stroke in January, Israel’s Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, pushed Israel towards unilateral disengagement. He said he would build on Hill E1 as a mark of his right-wing credentials — despite the fierce opposition of the United States — but in fact quietly did nothing. Then it was the turn of Binyamin Netanyahu, Sharon’s former rival for the leadership of the right-wing Likud. He came to Hill E1 to insist he would begin construction on the site despite the broken promises of his rival.
Last week, Netanyahu’s own rival for the premiership of Israel in this week’s elections, Ehud Olmert, leader of Sharon’s new Kadima party, made his own claim on Hill E1, insisting that he, too, would definitely begin construction of up to 1 000 Jewish housing units its dusty flanks.
In reality the work has already begun. Two weeks ago, Israeli bulldozers broke ground for a new police station for ”North” Maale Adumim. With polling day taking place on Tuesday, areas such as E1 have emerged as crucial to Israel’s relationship with the Palestinians.
The deal being offered by Kadima — which is likely to win the largest number of seats — is simple: withdrawal from large areas of the West Bank behind a new, self-determined border in exchange for the annexation of large settlement blocks. That package includes the development of Hill E1 — and with it the end of the Palestinian dream of a joined-up state on the West Bank.
If Kadima wins — and polling suggests it will take between 36 and 40 seats out of 120 — it will mark the election of a single party that can dominate the Knesset, with the power to take unilateral decisions. What kind of party Kadima will be, however, remains unresolved.
The party that Sharon put together after abandoning Likud encompasses not only right-wing defectors from Likud, including party leader Olmert, the former mayor of Jerusalem who is likely to be the next prime minister, but also the likes of Shimon Peres from the left.
In the words of political commentator Professor Yaron Ezrahi of the Hebrew University, it is a ”bazaar party”.
”It is a party where many famous Israeli politicians are setting out their stalls,” he said. What is historic about the birth of Kadima, he believes, is that it marks a final realisation across a wide spectrum of Israeli politics that the ”era of settlements is finally being wound up” — the desire, he says, of most Israelis.
”What Sharon had in abandoning Likud and creating Kadima was not a vague map of the future, but how to get it done,” said Ezrahi. ”That is what convinced Israelis. That is what Olmert has tried to follow: the determination to carry things through.”
But the coalition is so broad that many doubt it can survive. For while Olmert talks tough about settling borders along the separation wall, and about the annexation of territory in exchange for Israel’s withdrawal, his fellow Kadima leader, Shimon Peres, takes a very different line.
While Olmert identifies Kadima with Sharon, whose posters dominate its rallies, Peres associates the new party with Labour and his achievements in the Oslo peace process. The splits are summed up in divisions over the separation wall: Olmert insists it is the answer; Peres believes that history will mark it as a folly.
”In history, walls fall down,” he told The Observer last week. ”I don’t know when it will fall down. But it will. History is based on open doors. It prefers them.”
Where Peres agrees with Olmert, it is that Kadima’s success is based not only on a desire for disengagement, but also on the Israeli electorate’s rejection of the politics of division and its desire for a dominant centrist party.”The question,” says Peres, ”is why did Israelis oppose the logic of withdrawal for so long? We could have left Gaza 10 years ago.”
The answer is to be found in the settlement of Maale Adumim, opposite Hill E1, where residents who would be linked to Jerusalem by the proposed new development are split over its necessity, a reflection of the deeper splits in Israeli society.
Among those who support the building of E1 at Maale Adumim is construction manager and Kadima volunteer Hsik Nahum. In the settlement’s mall last week, he was adamant about the need to build on it: ”We need it. It will join us here in Maale Adumim with Jerusalem. Hill E1 is our connection.”
Not everyone is convinced, among them Labour supporter, civil servant and single mother Miriam Vazana. She is neither convinced that what she describes as the ”big ball” of Kadima can hold together without bursting, or that Israel should continue to build in opposition to the international community as it withdraws.
”Olmert and Kadima are promising everything ahead of the election,” she complained last week. ”If you want to go to the Moon, he will say you can go to the Moon. But I know what I am certain of. If building on Hill E1 makes a problem for peace, don’t build on it! What for?
”How many soldiers have to die, how many young children and old people, before we stop? I don’t want my 11-year-old son to say as he grows up: ”I don’t feel safe. I’m going to the US to study.” I don’t want him to be at risk in the army defending something that we don’t need.
”So I say: don’t build where we don’t have to.” – Guardian Unlimited Â