Mevaseret Adumim

Mevaseret Adumim, Israel (E-1, East-1) is an area immediately adjacent to

Jerusalem, which covers an area of 12,000 dunams (roughly 12 square kilometers

(4.6 sq mi) of largely uninhabited and mostly state-owned land. It is within the

municipal boundary of Maale Adumim.

The Israel Ministry of Housing, which devised the E-1 construction plan,

sought to develop the area in order to link Maale Adumim and its 42,000 residents

to Jerusalem. (Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (jcpa.org); 24 May 2009).

The centerpiece of the E-1 program entails building about 15,000 residential

homes, police station, large industrial zone, hotels, and cemetery to be shared by

Jerusalem and Maale Adumim. (Wikipedia, 11 May 2013)

The Israeli interest, one that tends to be ignored by the international

community, is to bring E-1 to fruition by establishing contiguity between

Jerusalem in the west and Maale Adumim as well as the approaches to the Dead

Sea in the east, as part of a security belt of Jewish communities surrounding

Israel’s capital.

Without control of the E-1 area, Israel is apprehensive about a Palestinian

belt of construction that will threaten Jerusalem from the east, block the city’s

development eastward, and undermine Israel’s control of the Jerusalem-Jericho

road. This major artery is of paramount strategic importance for Israel in order to

transport troops and equipment eastward and northward via the Jordan Rift Valley

in time of war, and this road is already subject to growing pressure from unchecked

Palestinian building. (Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (jcpa.org); 24 May 2009).