In 2005, when media outlets reported that Israel’s so-called E-1 construction project east of Jerusalem would slice the West Bank in half, they were wrong.
This week, when journalists revived the falsehood following a reported new lease on life for the previously shelved Ma’aleh Adumim construction plan, they are still wrong. The plan is the same plan, and the map is the same map.
Interestingly, there is a novel development regarding the resurrected falsehood which The New York Times acknowledged over a dozen years ago is false. As Times of Israel reported, “both critics and proponents [of the plan to build 3,401 housing units on the site] say [it] will effectively block a contiguous Palestinian state in the West Bank.” But the unusual alignment between right-wing Israeli Finance Minister Betzalel Smotrich, engaged in pre-election posturing, and anti-settlement activists, who have long toed the contiguity crock, doesn’t make either party correct about their assertion that the plan will cut the West Bank in two parts — north and south.
Nevertheless, the disparate voices pushing the geographic fallacy have gained journalistic traction, once again inserting the falsehoods quite literally back into the headlines.
AP’s erroneous headline yesterday (in Spanish as well) stated as fact: “Israel clears final hurdle to start settlement construction that would cut the West Bank in two.” The relevant geographic contours of 2005, when media outlets wrongly argued that the construction plan “would be a blow to Palestinian hopes for controlling contiguous territory,” have held their ground for the last two decades.
At the time, CAMERA’s Ricki Hollander and Gilead Ini explained:
Those who charge that Israeli building in Ma’aleh Adumim severs north-south contiguity disregard the fact that Palestinian-controlled areas would be connected by land east of Ma’aleh Adumim (marked on the map) that is at its narrowest point ~15 km wide.
Moreover, Israel proposes to build tunnels or overpasses to obviate the need for Palestinians to detour to the east through the corridor.
Ironically, many of those who argue for greater contiguity between Palestinian areas, at the same time promote Israeli withdrawal to its pre-1967 boundaries, which (even with minor modifications) would confine Israel to a far less contiguous territory than that of the West Bank. As shown on the map above, there is a roughly 15 km wide strip of land separating the Green Line (and the Security Fence) from the Mediterranean Sea (near Herzliya). Also shown is the circuitous route necessary to travel via this corridor between northern and southern Israel. (e.g. from Arad to Beit Shean.)
An earlier version of this article referred imprecisely to the effect of planned Israeli development in the area known as E1 on access to the cities of Ramallah and Bethlehem from Jerusalem, and on the West Bank. Such development would limit access to Ramallah and Bethlehem to only narrow corridors far from the Old City and downtown Jerusalem. It would also create a large block of Israeli settlements in the center of the West Bank; it would not divide the West Bank in two.Because of an editing error, the article referred incompletely to the possibility of a contiguous Palestinian state. Critics see E1 as a threat to the meaningful contiguity of such a state because it would leave some Palestinian areas connected to one another by roads with few exits or by circuitous routes; the proposed development would not, technically, make a contiguous Palestinian state impossible.