Palestinians condemn plans for East Jerusalem construction
Abbas says announcement pushes PA to turn to UN; Lapid warns against worsening rift with US, world
Palestinian officials on Monday denounced a proposal by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to advance construction plans for new housing units in East Jerusalem.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said the announcement that Netanyahu had given the go-ahead to plan for about 1,000 new homes in East Jerusalem would spur Ramallah to continue its statehood drive.
“These developments push us to decide and turn to international agencies and the [UN] Security Council as soon as possible,” Abbas said in a statement.
“This announcement amounts to evidence of an intent to further commit crimes defined by and punishable under international law,” Saeb Erekat, a top aide to Abbas and former chief peace negotiator, said in a release from his office.
Erekat further called on the international community to recognize a Palestinian state within pre-1967 borders, support the Palestinian bid to have the UN Security council put a deadline on Israel’s withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza, and boycott Israeli products and organizations.
A source in Netanyahu’s office said Monday morning the prime minister had okayed planning for some 600 homes in the Ramat Shlomo neighborhood and another 400 in Har Homa. The source also said the state would go ahead with the building of 12 new roads in the West Bank, which would also be used by Palestinians.
The move is likely to cause an “explosion” of violence,” senior Palestinian official Jibril Rajoub warned.
“Such unilateral acts will lead to an explosion,” Rajoub told reporters at a news conference in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
Rajoub, a senior figure within Abbas’s Fatah movement, said it was likely that such a move would only inflame tensions in the eastern sector of the city that has been swept by almost daily clashes over the past four months.
It would be a mistake to expect the Palestinians to simply ignore such actions, Rajoub said.
“Mr. Netanyahu should not expect a white flag from the Palestinian people,” he said.
Netanyahu’s announcement came a day after Israeli politicians warned of a backlash following a report that Netanyahu intended to push through some 2,000 new homes in the West Bank as well as a large package of infrastructure projects, in a deal with settlement leaders and right wing lawmakers.
Finance Minister Yair Lapid questioned on Monday the timing of Netanyahu’s move.
“We shouldn’t be advancing construction right now when we have a rift with the United States and the rest of the world,” Lapid, head of the centrist Yesh Atid party, told Israeli media outlet Ynet. “We shouldn’t worsen the rift with the world.”
Deputy Minister Ofir Akunis (Likud) brushed off any criticism of building in East Jerusalem as “hypocrisy.”
“Jerusalem has been the capital of Israel and the Jewish people for 3,000 years,” he said at a meeting with a delegation from Chile. “It is not our right to build there — it is our obligation. Jerusalem is to Israel what Washington is to the United States, London is to Britain or Paris is to France.”
Lapid was also among those who criticized the prime minister over the Sunday night report, saying pushing through new settlement construction would sour relations with the US.
Justice Minister Tzipi Livni also lashed out after that report, calling the move “irresponsible.”
It was unclear how Monday morning’s announcement affected the plans detailed in the Sunday report.
On Saturday, Lapid lobbied for action to resolve the “crisis” in Israel’s relationship with the US, asserting that Israel must do everything it can to repair the ties.
Relations between Washington and Jerusalem, which counts the US as its most important ally, have hit regular road bumps over the last several years and the administrations have aired differences over peace talks, settlement building, Iran’s nuclear program and other issues.
Netanyahu and his allies have sought to downplay the rift, but the Obama administration has used increasingly harsh language in condemning Israeli construction plans in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and last week, publicly refused Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon’s requests for meetings with several top national security aides due to its anger over negative comments he made about Secretary of State John Kerry’s Mideast peace efforts and nuclear negotiations with Iran.
Meanwhile, tensions in the West Bank and East Jerusalem have been simmering in recent months, with near-daily incidents of stone-throwing and rioting by Palestinians. On Thursday, a Palestinian man plowed his car into a crowd of people in East Jerusalem, killing two people, including a 3-month-old baby.
AFP and Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.
The Times of Israel Community.