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Revived Israeli Plan for New Homes in West Bank Sparks Outcry
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The new construction would be located deep inside the West Bank, in a northern part of the strategically important Jordan Valley, which some Israelis want to hang on to as a buffer zone between a future Palestinian state and Jordan. The area, along with the rest of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, was captured by Israel in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war and has been in dispute ever since.
The Maskiyot site had been used as an Israeli army base starting in the early 1980s, but the base was later abandoned. In recent years, it had served as a pre-military preparatory school for religiously observant Jews. Earlier this year, eight families moved into mobile homes at the site. They had been evacuated from the Gaza Strip when Israel dismantled its settlements there in 2005.
Dovi Tal, head of the regional council for settlers in the Jordan Valley, said U.S. officials had recently visited Maskiyot. Tal said he told them that "the Palestinians do here as they wish. They build houses illegally. So 100 houses in Maskiyot -- that is what will derail the road map?"
When Israel proposed building a settlement at Maskiyot in 2006, there was an international outcry -- including from the United States -- and the plan was put on ice.
Hagit Ofran, settlements expert for the Israeli advocacy group Peace Now, said the decision to revive the plan reflects a calculation that "the American administration is too weak to do anything about it."
Staff writer Karen DeYoung in Washington and special correspondent Samuel Sockol in Jerusalem contributed to this report.
