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(IsraelNN.com) The city of Maaleh Adumim held a demonstration on Monday calling on the government to allow building in Mevaseret Adumim, an area within the city limits where building has been frozen. The demonstration was attended by several Members of Knesset, including members of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's coalition, led by ministers Uzi Landau and Daniel Hershkowitz. Also present were members of the Yesha (Judea and Samaria) Council.
Police initially banned the protest, which was to include the symbolic laying of a cornerstone. The demonstration was allowed to take place as scheduled after organizers promised not to allow any form of construction, even symbolic. Instead, protesters buried a jug and a scroll.
Landau was open in his opposition to Netanyahu's building freeze policy. Jews should continue to build “on this side of the green line, on the other side of the green line, throughout the country,” he stated. “This is our homeland.”
Mevaseret Adumim is part of “E1,=”, a stretch of land between Maaleh Adumim and Jerusalem where a large-scale construction project has been planned for several years. Construction has been postponed due to strong opposition from the Palestinian Authority, which argues that building in the area would make it impossible for the PA to create a unified capital city in the eastern half of Jerusalem.
Peace Now Protest - A Good Sign?
As residents of Maaleh Adumim cheered the symbolic beginning of new life in Mevaseret Adumim, members of Peace Now held a counter-protest calling for a complete building freeze in Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria.
"People from Peace Now came to protest. It gave me confidence that a community will be built here,” said Yesha Council figure Danny Dayan. “Every time they've demonstrated against our efforts to build a new town, 'the dogs barked, the cars passed,' - the town was built.”
"Why do I think we will defeat [Peace Now]?” Dayan continued. “Because our belief in our cause is stronger, because we are more determined... in the end, these informers' protests won't help them. The land of Israel will be settled.”
Peace Now may succeed in creating temporary obstacles, but it will not stop the trend of Jewish growth in Judea and Samaria, Dayan concluded.
MK Uri Ariel of Ichud Leumi (National Union) had harsher words for the Peace Now demonstrators. “Whether they are a virus or not,” he said, referring to recent controversial remarks from minister Yaalon, “we should make them illegal.”
"What kind of Jew can even consider forbidding a cemetery outside a Jewish community?” he asked. Israelis must strengthen Netanyahu, “who is even weaker than his predecessor,” in order to continue building, he said.
Landau: Learn from Ben-Gurion
If Israel gives in to American pressure, “it will disgrace the state of Israel,” said Landau. Instead, he said, Israeli leaders should learn from Israel's first Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion.
When the world warned Ben-Gurion not to declare Jerusalem the capital of Israel, Ben-Gurion responded by moving the Knesset to Jerusalem, Landau explained. “We need to regain that spirit, to bring back that kind of leadership... We have honor, we have history, we have courage.”
New neighborhood launched in disputed E1 area
Hundreds of people, including ministers, MKs and Yesha Council heads attend symbolic groundbreaking ceremony for 'Mevaseret Adumim' neighborhood in disputed area outside Jerusalem. 'We won't be the world's sucker anymore,' Deputy Minister Porush says, 'This is our answer to international pressure on settlements'
"This is our answer to the international community's demand that Israel halt construction in the West Bank," Deputy Education Minister Meir Porush (United Torah Judaism) said Monday during a groundbreaking ceremony for a new residential neighborhood in E1, a sprawl of land connecting Jerusalem to Maaleh Adumim.
The US is opposed to any construction in the area, claiming that it hinders peace negotiations with the Palestinians.
The international community and the Palestinian Authority are closely monitoring developments in E1, as the PA claims Israel's real intention behind the plan is to expropriate Palestinian land, annex Jerusalem and divide the West Bank into Samaria and Judea.
"This symbolic cornerstone laying will eventually become a reality," he said, "I call on the public to keep building and believing."
Among the hundreds of people who attended the ceremony for the "Mevaseret Adumim" neighborhood were Ministers Daniel Hershkowitz (Habayit Hayehudi) and Uzi Landau (Yisrael Beitenu), as well as Knesset Members Danny Danon (Likud), Zeev Elkin (Likud) and Uri Orbach (Habayit Hayehudi).
Also in attendance were Maaleh Adumim Mayor Benny Kashriel and heads of the Yesha Council.
Maaleh Adumim is currently home to 37,000 people, while some 3,000 housing units are expected to be built in the new neighborhood.
"The State of Israel cannot find itself in an inferior position again amid the disgraceful and unjust calls to freeze settlement construction," Porush continued to say. "After Israel made all those foolish concessions on the heels of the Oslo Accords, we mustn't make any more unilateral sacrifices and continue to be the world's sucker amid Hamas' terror.
"It cannot be that the US will pressure Israel in order to improve its relations with the Arabs. This will jeopardize our security," he said.
A group of Peace Now activists arrived at the E1 sector while the ceremony was being held.
The demonstrators carried signs reading "Bibi and Barak, this is not a game," and "bi-national state under construction." Police forces kept the demonstrators away from the site.
Zviki Bar-Hai, head of the South Mount. Hebron Regional Council criticized Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, saying, "It is unprecedented for a prime minister to agree to a settlement freeze. The settlement enterprise is a living thing, and, God willing, we will overcome the obstacles and continue to build."
Prior to the ceremony Bar-Hai told Ynet, "This is the first time in Israeli history that a prime minister agrees to the establishment of a Palestinian state. Netanyahu agreed to what (Yitzhak) Rabin and Shimon Peres refused to agree to."
Yesha Council Chairman Danny Dayan said most of the West Bank construction approved by Defense Minister Ehud Barak had already been authorized by former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's cabinet.
"The only thing Likud has done is bring upon us the coming settlement freeze," he said.
Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin also spoke out against the government's planned settlement freeze, saying "anyone who thinks that Jerusalem will rise from the ashes of Hebron has learned nothing."
Rivlin was speaking at a memorial service marking the 80th anniversary of the 1929 Palestine riots.
Addressing the US' pressure on the settlement freeze, Rivlin added that, "Our friends in the international arena should know that not all is fair in diplomacy."
Also on Monday, the Labor Party backed Barak's decision to approve the construction of hundreds of housing units in the West Bank, saying it was "within the framework of the Zionist consensus."
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3773440,00.html
September 7, 2009