After Statehood Bid, 'Doomsday'We have already shown that it doesn't chop the West Bank in half, that the Clinton parameters were much more expansive than this plan, and that the most liberal Israelis accept that Maaleh Adumim would be a part of Israel in any peace plan.
The day after the U.N. voted 138 to 9 (with 41 abstentions) to recognize a rump Palestine, Netanyahu's government unveiled "the doomsday settlement," in the words of Jerusalem geography specialist Danny Seidemann. Casting aside assurances to Washington that date to the Administration of President George W. Bush, Netanyahu moved to virtually chop the West Bank in half, pushing forward plans to build housing for Israeli Jews on the last stretch of usable Palestinian land east of Jerusalem. Outraged diplomats said that would effectively end the possibility of a two-state solution.
Karl Vick doesn't mention that Daniel Seidemann is hardly an unbiased "geography specialist." Seidemann has founded at least two one-sided European-funded NGOs against any Israeli building in Jerusalem, Ir Amim and Terrestrial Jerusalem. Using Seidemann's loaded term of "Doomsday" to describe the building in the headline is more than irresponsible - it betrays Time's bias.
Beyond that, while Israel has postponed building on E-1 in recent years, it never promised any administration that it would never build there as Vick implies.
Moreover, there is zero reason that the E1 plan would end the possibility of a two state solution. Just because Palestinian Arabs pretend that they cannot have a state without arbitrary preconditions doesn't mean it is true. That simple fact eludes essentially everyone in the media.
Yet another item to add to the ever-growing list of reasons that Karl Vick is an anti-Israel idiot.