Jerrold Kessel and Pierre Klochendler interview DANIEL SEIDEMANN, founder of Ir Amim

IPS speaks to Daniel Seidemann, founder of Ir Amim, an Israeli watchdog group on settlement expansion and other Israeli policies in occupied East Jerusalem. Many international agencies rely on the information and analysis provided by Seidemann as a base for shaping their policy positions on Jerusalem.

IPS: Where do you see the main flashpoints?

DS: As a whole, Israeli settlement activity in and around East Jerusalem - the applicability of a settlement freeze is clearly on the U.S. agenda. The area known as "E1" is the most emblematic - that's the area where Israel wants to build a major new settlement that would effectively link the outskirts of East Jerusalem with the big settlement town of Ma'ale Adumim, thus severing Palestinians within the city from neighbouring Palestinian villages in the West Bank, and also cut off from one another Palestinian towns like Ramallah and Bethlehem, to Jerusalem's north and south. The Bush Administration managed to pressure the previous Israeli government to put E1 on hold, but only at the expense of settlement activity elsewhere in the city. Then, there are Israel's plans for what's called the Holy Basin, including the walled Old City and the whole area adjacent to it where most of the holy sites of all three monotheistic religions are located. It has, in effect, become a domain of the settlers. There is definitely government collusion with the ultra-nationalist religious settlers who have been given total control of the delicate ecosystem there. The immediate concern is for 88 Palestinian homes in the Silwan neighbourhood against which demolition orders have been issued.