Summary
Maale Adumim, in Lustick’s account the largest suburban settlement in the West Bank, established by decision of a Labor government in 1974-76 and, by the mid-1980s, the test case for the subsidized-settlement strategy of creating a non-ideological settler constituency against territorial compromise (For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, Chapter 6, lines 7678-8236).
Details
- A poll comparing Maale Adumim with Kiryat Arba found 80 percent of Maale Adumim respondents answering no to “Do you believe a real peace can be achieved through territorial compromise?” (Kiryat Arba: 99 percent); on a government decision to evacuate the settlement for a peace agreement, 60 percent in Maale Adumim said they would resist nonviolently until forcibly evacuated and 10 percent said they would take up arms (Kiryat Arba: 65 and 30 percent) (For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, Chapter 6, lines 7678-8236).
- In the 1984 elections, according to Benvenisti as quoted by Lustick, “the Likud bloc” received 77 percent of the vote in Maale Adumim and “the Labor bloc” 23 percent (For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, Chapter 6, lines 7678-8236).
- Benvenisti, as quoted by Lustick, records that the Labor party “emphasized that it was a Labor government that decided in 1974-76 on the establishment of the two largest West Bank urban centers, namely Ariel and Maale Adumim”, and that Labor has since campaigned for the suburban settlers’ votes (For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, Chapter 6, lines 7678-8236).
- Sentiments expressed by the chief of the Labor Party branch in Maale Adumim elicited a declaration from Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin that “there is no controversy with regard to the fact that Jerusalem and its environs, as well as Maale Adumim, will remain under Israeli sovereignty” (For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, Chapter 6, lines 7678-8236).
Related pages
For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, Kiryat Arba, Ariel, Meron Benvenisti, West Bank