Rabin Builds on the Vision of a Permanent Jewish City

"Greater Jerusalem" is a political rather than a geographic concept--rooted in Israel's vision of a metropolitan Jerusalem extending well into the city's West Bank environs, beyond even those areas annexed in June 1967.

Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin has a long-standing interest in this view. As chief of staff in June 1967, he advised his country's government to annex a larger portion of the West Bank for Jerusalem than was decided by his political superiors.

"I proposed to Prime Minister [Levi] Eshkol and to Defense Minister [Moshe] Dayan to apply Israeli law to a much larger area," Rabin said recently. "If my proposal had been accepted, today there would be no Jerusalem problem. Eshkol and Dayan said they did not want to swallow too many Arabs."

Rabin's policy of consolidating the successful West Bank settlement communities is particularly apparent in the area of greater Jerusalem. Rabin has declared this region to be beyond political debate, and new large-scale construction continues unabated.

"Jerusalem and outlying areas cannot be defined by us as a political issue or as a security issue," Rabin declared soon after taking office in 1992. "United Jerusalem under Israeli sovereignty will remain our capital forever. For us it is the heart and the soul of the Jewish people."

The Rabin government exempted from financing and building cutbacks major construction projects in East Jerusalem where thousands of units are currently being built.

The Jerusalem settlements supported by the Labor Party include suburbs like Gilo and Pisgat Ze'ev, where 70,000 residents are projected--the large housing developments built in annexed portions of the city that now house one-third of Jerusalem's Jewish population.

But the Labor government opposes, and has canceled, four small path-breaking projects begun by the Likud for the construction of Jewish enclaves within Arab areas. It has also discontinued all covert and overt government funding of the purchase of properties in such areas of East Jerusalem, notably the Old City's Muslim Quarter.

The government has instead set its sights on consolidating Israel's demographic grip on East Jerusalem by expanding existing housing developments and beginning large-scale construction in these new settlement communities: Har Homa, along Jerusalem's southern perimeter where construction for 4,500 units will soon commence; Rekhes Shoufat, opposite Neve Ya'acov, where 2,200 units are planned; and Ras Omar, southeast of Pisgat Ze'ev, which will create a continuous swath of Israeli housing between the city and the nearby West Bank settlement of Ma'ale Adumim.

Housing Minister Benjamin ben Eliezer has also confirmed that "there are no limitations on building" in the area of greater Jerusalem. "We have not touched and we have no intention of touching the area of Ma'ale Adumim, Efrat, Betar, and Ma'ale Efriam. Construction there continues as planned," he said.

To Jerusalem's east, the government is moving forward with plans to tie the Adumim bloc of settlements, anchored by Ma'ale Adumim--the largest West Bank outpost--to Jerusalem, four miles away. The purpose of this effort is to consolidate the existing "territorial continuity running from [the settlement of] Vered Jericho overlooking Jericho through Ma'ale Adumim to Jerusalem, an achievement which Israel will present to Palestinian negotiators as a geographic fact," according to Deputy Defense Minister Mordechai Gur.

During an October visit to Ma'ale Adumim, Gur declared that "Ma'ale Adumim is part of Jerusalem" and, according to the Jerusalem weekly newspaper, Kol Ha'Ir, he promised that the extensive construction under way in the city will continue and even increase.

As a demonstration of the government's commitment to the permanent retention of the West Bank area between Jerusalem and the Etzion bloc of settlements, Rabin approved completion of the $42 million Gilo-Etzion Bloc road linking the settlements south of Bethlehem with Jerusalem.

Ben Eliezer recently presided at the inauguration of a new neighborhood in the settlement of Efrat, south of Bethlehem. "The government regards the Etzion Bloc as an integral part of Jerusalem's defensive perimeter," he announced. The highway, he added, "is of prime security importance."

Continuing Labor's efforts to rationalize its settlement policies as dictated by security considerations, Gur has noted that "Past experience has proven that in order to defend Jerusalem one must have a strip of defense surrounding it in the north, south, east, and west."

In December, Rabin approved the creation of "municipal continuity" between Jerusalem and the West Bank settlements of Givat Ze'ev and Ma'ale Adumim, principally through the construction of new roads, tunnels, and bridges.

At Givat Ze'ev--close to Ramallah--the town's southern border has been extended south toward Jerusalem by the annexation of hundreds of acres of West Bank land near the Palestinian town of Bet Iksa. The addition of these lands to Givat Ze'ev, where 2,200 apartments are under construction, is intended to create "territorial continuity" between the settlement and Jerusalem.