The E1 lie

Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin faults the Prime Minister for having stopped building in the area of E1, the corridor that joins Jerusalem and Maale Adumim.

He says this will “isolate Maale Adumim and split up Jerusalem”.

But Rivlin shouldn’t be all that worried, because the opposite is true. Sharon is determined to build area E1 and surround it with a high wall, ostensibly part of the “Jerusalem security fence.” However, in reality it is just a big bubble ballooning eastward out of the center of Israel’s capital.

This step will bring about the immediate severing of the northern part of the West Bank from the southern part, and will cause the total isolation of east Jerusalem Palestinian residents from their natural Palestinian environs.

Two-state solution?

In practice, a Palestinian state with a continuous territorial area is no longer possible. East Jerusalem can no longer be used as any kind of center for the Palestinian nation, as all of it will ultimately come under Israel’s authority.

In any case, it will destroy the chances of any sort of negotiation between the sides to reach a peace agreement based on a two-state solution for two nations, with Jerusalem as the capital of both.

And this is exactly why Sharon has no intention of giving up the E1 building plan. If Rivlin wants to attack Sharon for the disengagement plan - unethical in and of itself in light of the traditional role and status of the Speaker of the Knesset - he should find himself another pretext.

So then why isn’t Sharon building the E1 these days? The reason is not rooted in the fear of it being swallowed up in any future agreement with the Palestinians. But rather entirely different: Area E1 is at the center of a political disagreement between Jerusalem and Washington.

The current American administration, like the one before it and like various European governments, fully understand how plans for the area will have an extraordinary, outsized impact on facts on the ground, and will forever torpedo the remaining slim chances for a peace that everyone has been waiting for decades to come.

Instead, under the protection of the withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, Sharon’s government is taking steps to strengthen Israel’s hold on greater Jerusalem.

Sharon's 'Jewish moves'

Immediately after disengagement, in just two months time, election time will come. Labor will shake off the bonds of a unity government and will want to prove it has its own policies of a more moderate nature.

Then the prime minister will implement his “Jewish” moves, which will prove beyond a doubt his determined will for the future of Jerusalem.

By dint of the security fence, Sharon can do what many prime ministers pondered about doing, but didn’t dare: to build area E1, thereby driving an arrow in to the very heart of a future Palestinian state, and the creation of a new reality for the quarter of a million Palestinians living in and around Jerusalem.

A reality with one goal: that east Jerusalem would never be a part of Palestine.

For months the government of Israel has been trying to realize the dream described here, by using the excuse that the residents of Maale Adumim must be protected.

This excuse was quickly refuted when the environmental, topographic and functional differences between Maale Adumim and area E1 became clear.

Now the Knesset Speaker himself stood up to expose the real intent of the plan: that yes, area E1 is the focal point, and that the prime minister’s plans for it, to build it and attach it to Jerusalem while cutting off the eastern part of the city from its environs are meant to create a new, irreversible political reality, which will be a source of regret for generations to come.

Rivlin has nothing to fear from Sharon’s stand on the issue. But the Israeli and Palestinian public, who understand that a peace agreement is the only solution that would enable life to go on in the region, have a great deal to fear.

- Amos Gil is head of the Ir Amim Organization