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Ma'ale Adumim is Israel

(Jerusalem Post) Editorial- 27,000 Israelis now live in Ma'ale Adumim and with current building, this number is projected to grow to 40,000 in three years. A new tunnel road under Mount Scopus connects it to Jerusalem by a ten-minute drive. For all purposes, the town is now the capital's main eastern suburb. Dismantling a thriving and integral town like Ma'ale Adumim is unthinkable under any circumstance. In the face of unbridled illegal building in the Arab neighborhoods of the capital, a vibrant and growing eastern suburb is in the Israeli national interest. The E1 plans to build a connecting neighborhood were drawn up in 1994 by Yitzhak Rabin's government. The logic of preventing Jerusalem being blocked off from the east by Arab neighborhoods is even more relevant today. In April, President Bush said that "in light of new realities on the ground including already existing major Israeli population centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949." It should be made clear to the administration that Ma'ale Adumim is the most major of these "population centers," and should serve as a test case for Bush's words.
2004-08-09 00:00:00
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