A Segregated Road in an Already Divided Land
Brett
A Segregated Road in an Already Divided Land
By STEVEN ERLANGER
JERUSALEM, Aug. 10 - Israel is constructing a road through the West
Bank, east of Jerusalem, that will allow both Israelis and
Palestinians to travel along it - separately.
There are two pairs of lanes, one for each tribe, separated by a tall
wall of concrete patterned to look like Jerusalem stones, an effort at
beautification indicating that the road is meant to be permanent. The
Israeli side has various exits; the Palestinian side has few.
The point of the road, according to those who planned it under former
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, is to permit Israel to build more
settlements around East Jerusalem, cutting the city off from the West
Bank, but allowing Palestinians to travel unimpeded north and south
through Israeli-held land.
"The Americans demanded from Sharon contiguity for a Palestinian
state," said Shaul Arieli, a reserve colonel in the army who
participated in the 2000 Camp David negotiations and specializes in
maps. "This road was Sharon's answer, to build a road for Palestinians
between Ramallah and Bethlehem but not to Jerusalem. This was how to
connect the West Bank while keeping Jerusalem united and not giving
Palestinians any blanket permission to enter East Jerusalem."
Mr. Sharon talked of "transportational contiguity" for Palestinians in
a future Palestinian state, meaning that although Israeli settlements
would jut into the area, Palestinian cars on the road would pass
unimpeded through Israeli-controlled territory and even cross through
areas enclosed by the Israeli separation barrier.
The vast majority of Palestinians, unlike Israeli settlers, will not
be able to exit in areas surrounded by the barrier or travel into
Jerusalem, even into the eastern part of the city, which Israel took
over in 1967.
The road does that by having Palestinian traffic continue through
underpasses and over bridges, while Israeli traffic will have
interchanges allowing turns onto access roads. Palestinians with
Israeli identity cards or special permits for Jerusalem will be able
to use the Israeli side of the road.
The government of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has recently made
conciliatory gestures to the Palestinians and says it wants to do what
it can to ease the creation of a Palestinian state. But Mr. Olmert,
like Mr. Sharon, has said that Israel intends to keep the land to the
east of Jerusalem.
To Daniel Seidemann, a lawyer who advises an Israeli advocacy group
called Ir Amim, which works for Israeli-Palestinian cooperation in
Jerusalem, the road suggests an ominous map of the future. It is one
in which Israel keeps nearly all of East Jerusalem and a ring of
Israeli settlements surrounding it, providing a cordon of Israelis
between largely Arab East Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank,
which will become part of a future Palestinian state.
In a final settlement, Israel is expected to offer the Palestinians
land swaps elsewhere to compensate.
The road will allow Israeli settlers living in the north, near
Ramallah, to move quickly into Jerusalem, protected from the
Palestinians who surround them. It also helps ensure that the large
settlement of Maale Adumim - a suburb of 32,000 people east of
Jerusalem, where most of its residents work - will remain under
Israeli control, along with the currently empty area of 4.6 square
miles known as E1, between Maale Adumim and Jerusalem, which Israel
also intends to keep.
For the Palestinians, the road will connect the northern and southern
parts of the West Bank. In a future that may have fewer checkpoints,
they could travel directly from Ramallah north of Jerusalem to
Bethlehem south of it - but without being allowed to enter either
Jerusalem or the Maale Adumim settlement bloc.
"To me, this road is a move to create borders, to change final
status," Mr. Seidemann said, referring to unresolved issues regarding
borders, refugees and the fate of Jerusalem. "It's to allow Maale
Adumim and E1 into Jerusalem but be able to say, 'See, we're treating
the Palestinians well - there's geographical contiguity.' "
Measure it yourself, he said. "The Palestinian road is 16 meters
wide," or 52 feet, he added. "The Israeli theory of a contiguous
Palestinian state is 16 meters wide."
Khalil Tufakji, a prominent Palestinian geographer, says the road "is
part of Sharon's plan: two states in one state, so the Israelis and
the Palestinians each have their own roads." The Palestinians, Mr.
Tufakji said, "will have no connection with the Israelis, but travel
through tunnels and over bridges, while the Israelis will travel
through Palestinian land without seeing an Arab."
In the end, he said, "there is no Palestinian state, even though the
Israelis speak of one." Instead, he said, "there will be a settler
state and a Palestinian built-up area, divided into three sectors, cut
by fingers of Israeli settlement and connected only by narrow roads."
Asked for comment, David Baker, an Israeli government spokesman, said:
"The security arrangements on these roads are in place to protect the
citizens of Israel. And they are not connected to any other matter."
A spokesman for the Israeli military's civil administration department
pointed out that Palestinians with permits to enter Israel could use
the Israeli side of the road, and that for ordinary Palestinians, the
road will be a quicker, better route from north to south than any
current route.
There are numerous roads that only Israelis and Israeli-permit holders
can travel on, but none segregated like this one.
E1 has been a key battleground in the struggle over control of
Jerusalem. Some, like Martin S. Indyk, a former American ambassador to
Israel now running the Saban Center at the Brookings Institution,
argue that Israel should yield E1 to the Palestinians. "E1 is a
critical issue in maintaining the territorial integrity and contiguity
of the West Bank with East Jerusalem - it's the only place where it's
possible to do that," he said.
Israel has promised the United States that it will not build housing
now in E1, freezing a plan to construct 3,500 homes. But Israel is
completing a large, four-story police station on a commanding hill in
E1, intended to be the main police headquarters for the West Bank, and
it is laying down electrical and water lines for future development.
And it is building this road.
What is nearly finished now, awaiting the fixing of lights and the
completing of tunnels and underpasses, stretches about 2.4 miles.
The road is currently open to the West Bank, but it cuts through the
intended path of the Israeli separation barrier, which has not yet
been built around E1 or Maale Adumim.
Presuming that the barrier will be completed, the road will be a kind
of umbilical cord that cuts through Israeli-controlled and walled
territory to connect the two parts of the West Bank.
"Now there's a big gap in the barrier between Azzariya and Shuafat,"
of about 2.4 to 3 miles, "and Israel hasn't started to build the fence
around Maale Adumim," said Mr. Arieli, the reserve colonel. "But this
road will be the answer if and when Israel builds the fence around
Maale Adumim. You see that Israel is creating the conditions for the
future. They try to take advantage of the current situation to prepare
the infrastructure for the right time to start building E1."
Mr. Seidemann believes that Mr. Olmert, facing many problems now, will
not start building in E1, but that the leader of Likud, Benjamin
Netanyahu, if he is elected prime minister, might do so. Mr. Netanyahu
said in 2005 that he would build in E1 no matter what Washington
thought.
Micaela Schweitzer-Bluhm, a spokeswoman for the American Consulate in
Jerusalem, repeated American policy that Palestinians should be
allowed to travel more easily through the West Bank "consistent with
the need to maintain security." Asked if this road predetermines final
status, she said, "The U.S. government has encouraged the parties to
avoid any actions that would predetermine permanent status," but said
she was not authorized to comment more specifically.
Mr. Tufakji said he had become cynical about the way Israel builds for
the future it defines, no matter what it promises Washington. He sees
a West Bank divided into three parts by Israeli settlement blocs, the
most important of which are Maale Adumim and E1, around the capital
that both peoples claim as their own. "Israel is building the
infrastructure to keep E1, to surround Jerusalem," he said. "They are
working to have an area of minimum Palestinians and maximum Israelis."
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/11/world/middleeast/11road.html