New town may be death blow to hopes for Israel peace ( Blame Israel for building in Israel!)
See all:The sign in big, red Hebrew letters reads âWelcome to Mevasseret Adumim, the Harbinger of the Hillsâ. A three-lane road with roundabouts leads up the hill to a police station and street lamps line the flyover that links the new town to neighbouring Maâaleh Adumim, one of the largest Jewish âsettlementsâ in Israel. There are no houses, cars or people in Mevasseret Adumim: it is a town laid out, waiting to be built. That is because international pressure has so far prevented construction from going ahead. The area is the last piece of open land linking Arab East Jerusalem to the West Bank and critics said that to develop it would bury the very notion of a two-state solution to the Middle East crisis.According to reports in the Israeli media, the area has been earmarked for development under a secret accord between Binyamin Netanyahu, the new, conservative Israeli Prime Minister, and his ultra-nationalist Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman. Better known under its old British mandate name, E1[.