WITH its shopping malls, sports centres and new residential blocks, Maale Adumim (pictured above) looks and feels like any other Israeli dormitory suburb. Less than ten minutes’ drive eastward from Jerusalem, the town on the edge of the Judaean Desert, which is also the third-largest Jewish settlement in the West Bank, may be about to become the first test case of America’s Middle East policy under Donald Trump.
Elements of Binyamin Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition are agitating to annex parts of the West Bank, starting with Maale Adumim, in the belief that the Trump administration will reverse a long-standing American policy opposing Israeli settlements in territory it occupied in 1967.
The mayor, Benny Kashriel, says that he is not concerned about international politics so much as local laws: “I want my town to have the same rights as any other town in Israel.” He complains that, because the West Bank (called Judea and Samaria by the Israeli government) is under military rule, Maale Adumim’s residents need to apply to the army if they wish, for instance, to close a veranda: “There is no reason that the Israeli law shouldn’t...Continue reading
Source: Middle East and Africa http://ift.tt/2hVacvL
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