Updated: CAMERA Prompts New York Times Corrections on Effect of E1 Corridor

December 16, 2012

Dec. 10, 2012

After CAMERA contacted the New York Times to discuss several erroneous claims about the effect of proposed construction by Israel in the E1 corridor between Jerusalem and Ma’aleh Adumim, the newspaper issued the following corrections:

Correction: December 8, 2012

Because of an editing error, an article last Saturday about Israel’s decision to move forward with planning and zoning for settlements in an area east of Jerusalem known as E1 described imprecisely the effect of such development on access to the cities of Ramallah and Bethlehem from Jerusalem. While development of E1 would limit access to Ramallah and Bethlehem to narrow corridors far from the Old City and downtown Jerusalem, it would not completely separate those cities from Jerusalem.

CAMERA: The above clarification by The New York Times still misleads. The E1 corridor is geographically irrelevant to the routes between Ramallah and Jerusalem or Bethlehem and Jerusalem and would have no impact on access to Jerusalem from those cities. The factor that limits access is issuance of a permit to enter Jerusalem.  The quickest and most direct route from Bethlehem to Jerusalem is via Derekh Hebron.  To travel to Jerusalem from Bethlehem via the E1 corridor entails a longer, round-about detour that would almost double the distance and time. Similarly, the most direct route from Ramallah is via Qalandia. To travel to Jerusalem from Ramallah via the E1 corridor entails an out-of-the-way detour. Development of E1, therefore, would neither limit nor have any relevance to direct access  from Ramallah and Bethlehem to Jerusalem.
 
UPDATED: The following correction was posted online on Dec. 10, 2012 and was published in the print edition on Dec. 16, 2012:


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 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.

UPDATED:  Dec. 16, 2012:

Ha’aretz and Jerusalem Post each discovered the New York Times corrections and published their own articles about it today.

For a more analysis on the subject, read CAMERA’s “Media Embrace E1 Falsehoods.”

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