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Bring Rice to Visit the Har Homa Neighborhood in Jerusalem

[Jerusalem Post] Calev Ben-David - The next time U.S. Secretary of State Rice touches down in Jerusalem, it might be wise to take her to visit a place she has apparently never been: Har Homa. Although Har Homa sits just north of Bethlehem and just south of the Palestinian villages of Sur Bahir and Umm Tuba, it doesn't abut directly against, or limit or cut off access to, any of them. In fact, Har Homa sits in a relatively unpopulated border area. The planning and approval process for the neighborhood dates back to the early 1990s government of Yitzhak Rabin. In his famed April 14, 2004, letter to then-prime minister Ariel Sharon, President George W. Bush referred to the "new realities on the ground" that make a full return to the 1949 lines "unrealistic." If this doesn't apply to Har Homa, it's hard to say exactly where else it would. That's why it's troubling that Rice would repeatedly single out construction in a Jerusalem neighborhood that sits within the Israeli side of the security fence and is contiguous with the former border community of Kibbutz Ramat Rahel. In specifically citing Har Homa, the Bush administration is certainly not engendering confidence in the current post-Annapolis negotiations with an Israeli mainstream that knows exactly where Har Homa is.
2007-12-20 01:00:00
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