Wednesday, April 15, 2009
E1 - Sounds harmless, doesn't it?
It's not!...
In the U.K.'s TimesOnline, James Hider explains:
"All the pieces are in place. Land has been levelled for housing, the roundabouts indicate that more roads will soon spread out across the wooded hills and the existing road network hints at the future shape of Jerusalem, according to Haim Erlich, an Israeli researcher for the co-existence group Ir Amin.
Mr Erlich points to the almost completed flyover crossing the Jerusalem to Jericho highway, which links E1 to Ma'aleh Adumim, sealing the gap of Jewish suburbs around East Jerusalem. Once the two are joined and then combined with smaller existing Jewish settlements and an industrial area farther out in the West Bank, the so-called Adumim block will have about 45,000 residents and cover more land than Tel Aviv, the second- largest Israeli city, he said.
'If they are really going to build E1, the meaning of that for the Palestinians will ... [mean] that the talks about a two-state solution are only on the level of theoretical talks,' Mr Erlich said. 'It's the end of the idea of the two-state solution.'"
