Rapidly expanding settlements.

On August 5, 2004, the Israeli government reported that it intended to cut about 25% of the 600 new homes recently announced for Ma'ale Adumim, the largest of the Jewish West Bank settlements ("Israel to reduce building plan," Post, August 6). This appears to have been for foreign consumption only, especially American, to make people believe that Israel is really very cautious about new housing on the West Bank. Other reports, however, indicate that the truth is very different.

Ma'ale Adumim has almost 40,000 people (CJN, August 12). It thrusts out from the 35-year-old long eastward expansion of Jerusalem city itself, across the West Bank towards the Jordan river, thereby threatening to cut the West Bank in half.

In two pages of texts and illustrations in the Toronto Star of August 8, Mitch Potter pointed out that "the seldom-mentioned settlement of Ma'ale Adumim crept into the news in July when the Settlement Watch team from Israel's Peace Now group unveiled a series of before-and-after aerial photographs, proving it and other settlements in the West Bank continued to expand between March and May 2004." This was in open contradiction to Israeli commitments made on April 15 with President George W. Bush at the White House.

The British Guardian Weekly of July 30, 2004, also published aerial photographs, showing new settlements elsewhere being provided with roads, water, and electricity. Israeli peace groups report that "thousands of homes are under construction in the approved settlements" in addition to the expansion of so-called illegal settlements which, again, are not approved by the Sharon government but which obtain funds surreptitiously from other organizations or government departments.

The official plan calls for moving the 8000 Jewish settlers in Gaza into the West Bank beginning this fall, but as of now there is no certainty that this will happen. Meanwhile, on August 18, Sharon approved another 1000 homes for the four largest settlements. When the U.S. remained silent, he quickly approved another 530.

The Sharon numbers count for little since many other houses are being built without official announcements. Most of these towns will become part of Greater Israel surrounded by the wall now being built. Palestinians in the southern part of the West Bank will then find it well-nigh impossible to communicate and travel to the northern section, and vice versa.