http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/12/israel_returns_fire.html
“Perhaps the time has finally come for Israel to claim in full its settlement rights in Judea and Samaria under international law.”
One day after the United Nations General Assembly recognized “Palestine” as a “nonmember observer state” — a status that it shares only with the Vatican — an actual state responded. The Netanyahu government quickly fired a shot across the bow of the Palestinian Authority for its decision to court the United Nations rather than negotiate with Israel. Israel announced that it is authorizing the construction of 3000 housing units in East Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria (the West Bank). Even more brazenly, it intends to proceed with plans for zoning and development in a barren area known as E-1, between Jerusalem and Ma’ale Adumim to the east, on the road to Jericho.
Like Captain Renault in Casablanca, liberal pundits were “shocked, shocked” to realize that the words of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in the General Assembly and the votes of its members could so quickly be trumped by the Israeli government. According to the New York Times (in page 1 coverage that read like an editorial), Israel’s response was a “surprise” that came as a “shock.” It indicated the determination of the Jewish state to wage “diplomatic war” over the future of 4.6 square miles of barren landscape with nothing on it but a police station and some Bedouin shepherds.
There is no denying the strategic importance of E-1. Its development would create a seamless corridor between Israel’s capital and Ma’ale Adumim, a hilltop community in the Judean desert inhabited by nearly 30,000 Israelis. That would effectively divide the West Bank, with Ramallah and the north linked to Bethlehem and the south only by a highway.