Israel Matzav

Migron and Jerusalem: Everyone's struggle

At the height of the Ramat Shlomo controversy in March 2010, I did a post where I explained how Ramat Shlomo looks down on the highways that connect different parts of Jerusalem. This picture lets you visualize it better than any I have ever posted. Let me give you a quick tour.

The mountain with all the buildings on top that is dead center in the picture is Ramat Shlomo. The highway that seems to start at bottom right, runs under the two bridges and then runs below Ramat Shlomo is known as the Arazim tunnel road until it becomes Road #9 under the first bridge. It connects the Jerusalem - Tel Aviv highway to the northeastern end of the city. After Ramat Shlomo, there are turnoffs to the Jerusalem neighborhoods of Neve Yaakov, Pisgat Zev and French Hill, to the Jewish towns in Samaria, to Maaleh Adumim just east of Jerusalem and to the Dead Sea and the Jordan Valley. Although the Arazim tunnel part was opened just five years ago, this road is a major artery.

The first bridge is the Ramot road. If you were to turn left (north), it runs right through the five neighborhoods of Ramot (1, 2, 3, 4 and 6 - please don't ask me why there is no 5) and then out to the prophet Samuel's tomb and Givat Zev before linking up to Route 443 near Ramallah. If you turn right, it runs to Har Hotzvim (one of our two major high tech office parks) and then to the center of the city and the Old City.

The second bridge is Route 443 on the left and the Begin (as in Menachem Begin) highway on the right. The Begin highway cuts across all of Jerusalem to its southern end, coming out near the Malcha mall, a hop, skip and jump away from the tunnel road that leads to Gush Etzion and Hebron. Route 443 is a back road heading toward Tel Aviv, joining the main Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway near Ben Gurion Airport.

So as you can see, Ramat Shlomo is more than just a Jewish suburb of Jerusalem. The fact that 20,000 Jews live there is protection for a main point in Jerusalem's highway system.

What's true in Jerusalem is true outside Jerusalem as well. Giulio Meotti talks about Migron, which I have discussed several times before, and how the battle for Migron and other so-called 'illegal outposts' is the same battle as the battle for Jerusalem. Like Ramat Shlomo, Migron sits atop a major highway, Route 60, which runs North-South through Judea and Samaria. Meotti fears - justifiably - that giving up the outposts will make the lives of residents of Judea and Samaria much more hazardous, and will open the possibility of giving up similar assets in Jerusalem like Ramat Shlomo. In a word, the battle for Jerusalem and the battle for Judea and Samaria are one and the same, and we need to stop pretending otherwise.

The army and the government have perhaps forgotten that many outposts were necessary for security to protect the core settlements and roads. Some outposts were constructed at dangerous junctions in the West Bank where terror attacks had occurred. Many of them were built with government support to the combined tune of more than NIS 70 million.

The Migron outpost, now threatened for destruction, was built with military assistance because of its strategic location overlooking a main road. Nobody likes to say it, but Migron saved the IDF from having to be deployed there. Settlements and outposts are the forward defense line of the coastal plain and Jerusalem.

Compared to the hell of terror in Sderot, Ashdod, Beersheba, Ashkelon and the other communities located in the area near Gaza, the Jewish communities of Samaria look like a bit of paradise, despite the threat of terror.

It's because those communities continue to develop and contribute significantly to the IDF’s control of the area. In consequence, the Arabs there don’t dare attack as they do daily in Gaza.

Barack Obama made it clear that there is no difference between outposts, settlements and towns inside pre-1967 Israel. Obama claims that even Har Homa and Gilo are “illegal” Jewish enclaves. Obama’s de-legitimization of Jerusalem’s post-1967 neighborhoods (Neveh Yaakov, Ramot Eshkol, French Hill, Pisgat Ze’ev or East Talpiot) is the American version of the Sasson’s report for the outposts.

These neighborhoods, which house about one-third of Jerusalem’s population, protect the city.

The neighborhood of Ramot serves as a buffer to the north; Mount Scopus, French Hill, Ramat Eshkol, and Sanhedria protect Jerusalem’s east.

To decide, as a matter of policy, not to endorse the building of Jewish homes within existing Israeli areas is the abrogation of the right of Jews to live wherever they wish in Israel.

Migron and Gilo are the two laboratories where terrorists and peaceniks sought to discover whether they could force Jews into abandoning their homes. If the Jewish homes are abandoned and/ or handed over to the Palestinians, the latter will see it as confirmation of their belief that terrorism pays off and that they are on the right road in a war that will eventually return them to Jaffa, Haifa, Zichron and Jerusalem.

"Migron: Everyone's struggle", states the placard stretched along the road from Jerusalem to the Binyamin region. Destroy the outposts and you will see the domino effect: all Israel will be in danger.

Read it all.

Labels: Jerusalem, Migron, Ramat Shlomo

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 3:40 PM