Deputy FM: Lapid’s reaction to building plans harsher than Americans’

Deputy Foreign Minister Ze’ev Elkin on Monday morning denounced comments made by Finance Minister Yair Lapid the previous day against the government’s decision to build nearly 1,200 new housing units in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

On Sunday, Lapid called the move a “double mistake,” and said that “the solutions to the housing problems must be enacted in the regions with high demands… The use of resources allocated for middle class housing as a show of defiance in the face of the Americans, in order to impede peace talks, is not helpful to the process.”

Speaking to Army Radio on Monday, Elkin said that “Lapid’s response was harsher than that of the Americans.” He added that Israel has the right, even the obligation to build, in order to “maintain a Jewish majority in Jerusalem.”

Housing and Construction Minister Uri Ariel (Jewish Home) announced Sunday that 793 new apartments would be built in Jerusalem, and 394 in large settlement blocs in the West Bank.

“No country in the world takes orders from other countries on where it can build and where it can’t,” Ariel said in his statement. “We will continue to market the homes, and to build in the entire country… This is the right thing at the present time, for Zionism and for the economy.”

Ariel has long been a vocal supporter of building across the Green Line, having previously served as secretary general of Amana, a settlement movement, and of the Yesha Council, an umbrella group of settlement municipalities.

Four hundred new units are set to be built in the Gilo neighborhood, 210 in Har Homa, and 183 in Pisgat Zeev neighborhoods of Jerusalem. In the West Bank, Efrat would receive 149 new apartments, Ariel 117, Maaleh Adumim 92, and Beitar 36.

The announcement of the new construction is an apparent tradeoff for Israel agreeing to release 104 long-held Palestinian prisoners in four installments over several months, with the first group of 26 to be freed Wednesday.